


Lost Stars

by lanouvellelune



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Betrayal, Bipolar Disorder, Child Abuse, Drama, F/F, F/M, First War with Voldemort, Friends to Lovers, Halloween 1981, Hogwarts Seventh Year, Hogwarts Sixth Year, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Incest, M/M, MWPP, Marauders' Era, Mental Health Issues, Mutual Pining, Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter), Post-Hogwarts, Pureblood Politics (Harry Potter), Romance, Self-Harm, Sexual Abuse, Slow Burn, Whomping Willow Incident
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-01
Updated: 2018-10-28
Packaged: 2018-12-22 12:01:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 8
Words: 20,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11966955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lanouvellelune/pseuds/lanouvellelune
Summary: NEWTs are hard enough already without the drama of being sixteen. But between break-ups and make-ups and an impending war, the future written in the stars looks pretty damn bleak.Honestly, they’re all just trying to survive.





	1. Imploding Stars

**Part I**

_“But are we all lost stars, trying to light up the dark?”_

—

It starts slowly and ends suddenly.

—

The day before the incident, Remus laughs. He laughs like the moon-ache isn’t in his bones, like his joints don’t creak, like the hunger isn’t creeping up within him, ready to strike.

He smiles and he jokes and he threatens to turn James’s hair pink if y _ou don’t get that Snitch out of my face, I swear to Merlin, Prongs!_

The day before the incident, everything is fine. They are sixteen and on top of the world. Remus has friends, good grades, and a life he can be proud of despite everything.

There is a war, yes, but it is distant, and young boys are invincible.

 _We’re not young_ , James insists. After all, they’re practically seventeen.

“We’re old enough to fuck, to fight—“

“To die,” intones Sirius, with the same sulking bitterness he’s had since he ran away from home over the summer. He pretends it doesn’t bother him that his mum blasted him off the family tree, but Remus knows better. He sees the storm brewing behind his grey eyes when he thinks no one’s watching.

“We’re not going to—ARGGH!”

Peter’s well-timed Gobstones attack strikes James right between the eyes. Sirius’s lips twitch, and the cloud passes, leaving only twinkling stars in its wake.

Everything is fine.

—

White light blinds Remus as he peels back gritty eyes. His head throbs with the same _thump-thud_ of the rising and falling tide, which ebbs as the light fades into shapes, colors, and finally, faces.

James hovers above him uncertainly, his eyes crinkling with worry. There are scratches on the side of his face—three shallow slashes that look sickeningly like claw marks. He didn’t have them yesterday. Peter fidgets behind him, half-hidden in the swirls of his disheveled robes. He’s vaguely green as he picks nervously at the hem of his jumper.

Sirius is nowhere to be seen.

“Where’s Sirius?”

His own hoarseness surprises him. It’s been years since he’s howled himself raw, since he’s woken up after a full moon with a blank space for memories and the vague taste of metal in the back of his throat. Back before Hogwarts, his only victim was himself, the hunger driving him to bite and tear at his own tender flesh until deep, dark gashes of blood painted the cellar floor red. He craved the tang of iron and the taste of human meat between his fangs. When the moon-sickness took hold, he wasn’t Remus Lupin, the quiet, slight boy of Number 13 Heol Berwyn anymore; he was a monster.

But Hogwarts changed that. _His friends_ changed that.

Instead of being terrified or angry when they discovered his secret, they took it upon themselves to spit in the face of an entire sub-section of wizarding law and every school rule on the book to become illegal Animagi.

For him, a half-breed.

As the moon rose and sparkled across the depths of the Black Lake that first month after their transformations, a dog, a stag, and a rat joined him in the Shrieking Shack. Together, they became Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs, purveyors of magical mischief and kings of Hogwarts.

For the first time since turning, Remus was able to keep his mind—to keep _himself_.

For the first time since turning, he didn’t feel like a monster.

“How much d’you remember, mate?”

James speaks the words, but he doesn’t sound like himself. There’s something there, lurking just underneath and out of sight, but Remus’s head is too foggy to discover it. The room slides in and out of view like the moment between waking and sleeping, when the world is twilight and shadows move in the dark.

An old fear rises from these shadows and festers in the pit of his stomach, a curdling sensation he hasn’t felt in over a year:

“Did I hurt him?”

James shakes his head wildly so his glasses nearly fall off. “No!”

“Then— _what_?”

“Ah, Mr. Lupin,” speaks a kindly voice behind them. Dumbledore appears from seemingly nowhere, his violet robes brushing the ground as he walks with the agility of a man half his age.

“Headmaster?" The question quivers out from between his lips.

“I wonder, perhaps,” says Dumbledore to James and Peter, “if I might have a few moments alone with our injured friend…”

James opens his mouth to argue, but Dumbledore gives him a look over his half-moon spectacles that has his jaw snapping shut. He slides away from the bed, dragging Peter along with him. They linger anxiously by the entrance until Madam Pomfrey shoos them away and locks the door behind them. Her footsteps echo off the walls until she returns to a stack of precariously piled student charts and disappears behind them.

Trepidation builds in Remus’s stomach as Dumbledore rummages through his deep pockets, eventually unearthing several small, white, sugary mice.

“Ice mice?”

He shakes his head mutely.

“A wise choice, I think,” says Dumbledore with a hum, stowing them back in his pocket. “Chattering teeth do begin to rattle the brain after awhile.”

The headmaster pulls up a chair beside Remus’s white-sheeted bed, and now he knows they are getting to the true purpose of Dumbledore’s visit. But as with everything, Dumbledore takes his time, first draping his robes across his legs comfortably, then smoothing his long, white beard with his hand.

The clock on the wall ticks menacingly.

“You’ll be pleased to know that no one was injured,” says Dumbledore, his kindly blue eyes surveying Remus through his glasses. “Aside, perhaps, from Severus’s pride, which I’m told has suffered a terrible blow.”

“Snape…?”

“Mr. Potter managed to successfully rescue Mr. Snape before he encountered a fully grown werewolf and what would’ve been an excruciatingly painful end; although Mr. Snape seems less grateful than one might expect.”

_The moon throbs within his veins._

_And then—the scent—_

_Human._

Cold creeps along his skin, an icy frost that turns his blood sluggish and constricts his lungs until he thinks he might pass out. He remembers the smell of blood, thick and hot and mouth-watering. It’s been so long since the wolf has fed, since he’s tasted soft skin and dined on juicy marrow.

_The wolf is hungry, and dinner has served itself up on a gold platter._

_He paces in front of the door as it draws nearer, opening his jowls eagerly._

_The door creaks open; the air ripens with delicious fear and pounding blood. He swipes his claws at the intruders and catches buttery-soft flesh._

_He howls._

_“Easy, Moony,” soothes a familiar voice._

_The blood taint passes, and the wolf is hungry and alone again._

“Furthermore,” continues Dumbledore, “I have Mr. Snape’s assurances, however resentful they may be, that he will not reveal the nature of your condition to anyone.”

“And you really trust him?” he asks in the same coarse voice as before.

“Yes,” he replies with a simple nod, “for reasons I shan’t explain now. Whatever feud you, young Misters Black, Potter, and Pettigrew have with Mr. Snape, let this be the end of them. For I fear a greater victim than tonight’s should they continue.”

Bile rises in his throat.

_Sirius._

“Professor—where’s Sirius? Why isn’t he here?”

Dumbledore smiles sadly, but it does little to calm him. He rather wishes he hadn’t smiled at all.

—

September 1st, 1971: Remus sits on his bed as he unpacks his trunk and tries not to squirm under three curious pairs of eyes.

“I’m Sirius,” says a haughty boy with a defiant chin tilt. “Sirius Black.”

 _Sirius_ , he muses—the brightest star in the sky.

And he does shine brightest.

But the brightest stars are the quickest to burn out.

—

He smells him before he sees him—a depressing tang of salty tears and stale firewhiskey that reeks from beyond the dormitory door. As if he deserves to drown his pathetic sorrows in a bottle of Ogden’s Finest.

As if he deserves any sympathy at all.

He came to see him once while Remus was asleep. The bitter bite of alcohol tainted his fever-dream as the long, silver fingers of the moon reluctantly released their hold over him. He hovered over him conspicuously and whispered “Moony?" But Remus kept his eyes shut and pretended to be asleep even as he sniffled out apology after wet apology.

He doesn’t want his apology.

He doesn’t want anything to do with Sirius Black.

He thought he loved him once, maybe, with the same world-consuming swell of emotion in which all fourteen-year-old boys drown. Sirius was lounging on the sofa in the common room, his long, slender fingers curled in Marlene McKinnon’s mahogany hair (Sirius’s first girlfriend, but most definitely not his last), and suddenly Remus’s weak heart _ached_ to feel his elegant fingers curled in his own blonde locks.

Would they be tender and supple—the fingers of a reluctant aristocrat? Or would they be sensual and curious, wandering under Remus’s shirt, tracing every pale scar, until they slipped beneath his trousers and—

He had to excuse himself quickly at that, beating out his hard-on with his own calloused palm as he imagined Sirius’s playful grin and meandering hands.

Maddeningly, from then on it was as if Sirius could read his mind; he always had some excuse to touch him, whether he was helping him perfect the wand movement for a Bedazzling Hex or carrying him to the hospital wing after a full moon. His hands were always there, hovering along Remus’s skin, driving him to the brink of insanity.

Remus was drunk on the way his fingers wrapped around his first cigarette in fifth year (“Filthy Muggle habit,” said Sirius gleefully. “Mum’ll hate this!”) and stroked the neck of a butterbeer bottle in the Three Broomsticks, and he’d never been so bollocksed, for when the older boy came back late one Saturday smelling of Ginger Chan’s cheap, glitter-infested perfume, he wanted nothing more than to pin him to the bed and let the wolf take him.

How long did Remus pray to a god he only casually believed in to relieve him of this curse? How many times had he cried out Sirius’s name in the wet corners of the shower, wishing he could put an end to the madness?

And now here he is, completely cured of his obsession with Sirius Black, and all he feels is numb.

He wants to be angry. He wants to shout and scream himself hoarse, to beat his fists on Sirius’s pretty face until he understands the pain he’s caused Remus.

But _Merlin_ , Remus is tired.

He’s tired of living and he’s tired of loving and he’s _so very tired_ of Sirius Black.

“Pomfrey finally let you out, eh?” asks James in a falsely cheery voice when Remus works up the energy to push open the dormitory door.

James is trying so hard to make everything go back to normal, but he doesn’t understand: it can never be normal again.

“Would’ve been sooner, but I snapped clean through one of my bones, and it took a bit of mending,” he replies, looking directly at Sirius. And bloody hell, doesn’t he look pathetic, cringing behind his scarlet drapes like he has the right to be upset.

James seems to be at a loss, caught between two imploding stars, and settles on gently clapping Remus on the back while maintaining his counterfeit smile: “Well, welcome back, mate.”

“Cheers,” agrees Peter, looking nervously from Remus to Sirius.

Sirius opens his mouth to speak—perhaps another “I’m so sorry” or “I didn’t know what I was thinking” or a quiet, pleading “ _Moony_ ”—but Remus, who doesn’t think he’ll be able to control himself if he hears him simper one more time, beats him to it.

“Guess you’ve finally managed to make your parents proud after all, eh, Padfoot?”

And without another word, he climbs into his four-poster, shuts the curtains behind him, and doesn’t think about the broken pieces of Sirius he leaves lying on the floor.

—

It is the spring of 1971. There is no talk of Voldemort, no worries of war, no whisper of fear. There is only a boy and his mother and a sadness that lingers between them.

Remus Lupin is eleven years old today.

But there are no parties or presents, no well-wishes or jolly good fellows—only another year of bright red scars which fade slower than the setting sun.

Only a kiss from his mother and a soft “ _fi'n caru ti_.”

No father, who can barely stand to look at his son’s scarred face most days, and no Hogwarts letter.

Most eleven-year-olds, at least the ones born to wizard-kind, anticipate their eleventh birthday above all the rest. Many spend the day with their noses pressed against dirty window panes, searching the skies for tawny owls that bring them their futures wrapped in parchment and red wax seals.

But Remus Lupin is not one of them, and he studiously avoids the bright blue sky and glowing sun that glitters on the last vestiges of melting snow. He spends the day with his nose in a book and reads words upon words, though none are the words he desperately wishes to read.

Remus Lupin is a wizard, but unlike most magical children his age, he will not be attending the prestigious Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Remus Lupin is also a werewolf, and as such, is a danger to anyone and everyone around him.

He was bitten at the tender age of five, retribution for his father’s tirades against “dangerous monsters,” but Remus barely remembers it. Frightening crimson eyes visit him and his bones shatter into a million tiny pieces in the depths of his nightmares.

He remembers his mother’s hand on his forehead after, the glistening tears in her amber eyes, and the soft press of lips on his cheek as he drifts into unconsciousness.

He remembers his father’s disdain, the absence of his touch, and his mother’s hysterical voice as she begs her husband to hug his son.

 _He doesn’t have the luxury of being a boy, Hope,_ raves Lyall Lupin. _He’s got to know. He’s got to prepare himself. There are a lot meaner things than me out there. He can’t let himself be crushed by them. He’s got to be stronger—better. Or he’ll never survive._

Remus hears every word from the top of the stairs, but when his mother comes to check on him later, he hides under the covers and silently squeezes the tears from his eyes.

There are more arguments after that, more nights spent with his head resting on damp pillowcases, but like a wolf that has put on its winter coat, the cold words don’t penetrate his flesh. Remus accepts that he is a monster, and therefore, when his father forces them to move because the Muggles begin to ask odd questions about the sickly boy at Number 13, he packs his books quietly and goes without argument.

When he gets loose one full moon and nearly bites a villager, he lets his father put him in chains the next month and howls at the constellations through the slit of a single, boarded window.

And so his life is thus; all the misery of their existence belongs to him, and he carries it with the grace of a man much older and and stronger than himself.

On his eleventh birthday, Remus doesn’t ask his mother about his Hogwarts letter. He already knows the answer.

—

“Professor—where’s Sirius? Why isn’t he here?”

Dumbledore smiles sadly, but it does little to calm him. He rather wishes he hadn’t smiled at all.

“Forgive me, Remus. I forgot that as you had already begun your transformation, you are unaware of the circumstances which led to tonight’s events. Suffice it to say that Mr. Black is well and unharmed, although like Mr. Snape, he is nursing his injured pride. As I understand it, Mr. Black played a rather unfunny prank on Mr. Snape, which led him to the Shrieking Shack and to you. When Mr. Potter learned what Mr. Black had done, he went after Severus and pulled him back, saving both your lives in the process. I believe now that Mr. Black is currently serving detention with Professor McGonagall, and shall be for some time.

“With that being said, Madam Pomfrey would have my head if I didn’t instruct you to get some rest. So I bid you pleasant dreams, Remus.”

Then Dumbledore leaves, as though he hasn’t dismantled Remus’s world in the span of ten minutes.

Despite years of transformations, despite broken bones, infected wounds, and scars that ache when it rains, Remus has never felt such consuming, life-shattering pain. It’s like flames, licking at his skin—like drinking acid, like dying and coming back a thousand times only to die again more gruesomely than the last.

Sirius betrayed him. Somewhere deep inside him, in the fears that Remus has never spoken aloud, the whispers that caress him in the dead of night when silvery moonlight streams through the window and dust particles dance in the air like falling stars, Remus knew that this would happen. He knew because he feels the monster in his veins. He can’t escape, no matter where he runs or how hard he pushes himself. The monster is there, lurking, eager to rear its ugly head and do what monsters do best.

Perhaps once Remus dreamed of a different life; perhaps once he thought he could be normal—that he could have friends, a life outside of lycanthropy—a future.

 _You must have hope, Remus,_ said his mother. _The future isn’t written in stone._

Perhaps not, he concedes. Perhaps it's written in blood—bright crimson blood that stains Remus’s hands. He can never wash it off; he puts it there with every full moon adventure and with every near miss that leaves them breathless with laughter afterwards.

He is nothing but a game to them, a thrill for spoiled rich brats. They don’t care that this is his life. If James hadn’t pulled Snape back, Remus would’ve torn him to bits and been executed like a rabid dog. History would’ve remembered him as nothing more than another rogue werewolf that cut short the life of a bright young student.

Remus’s very life hung in the balance of this so-called prank.

And Sirius hadn’t given one bloody fuck.


	2. Supermassive Black Hole

_Hey lads,_

_Heard from Padfoot lately? I sent an owl but she returned with the letter unread._

_Worried, Wormtail_

—

Life, Sirius decides, feels like watching the ground rush up to meet you as you fall through the sky.

It is an endless barrage of emotion—a ceaseless battering that leaves him drowning in a puddle of his own misery.

He isn’t daft; he knows it’s the curse. _The Black Madness_ , they call it—the product of centuries of inbreeding. His mother has it, his grandfather had it, even his namesake—his great-great grandfather Sirius—had it. He can feel it taking hold inside him too, the hands of the clock _tick-tick-ticking_ incessantly until—

_Snap!_

He can't escape it; his mind is a prison. The delicate ticking of time drives him slowly but surely to lunacy, the unrelenting countdown keeping time with a perpetually-swinging pendulum of soaring highs and suffocating lows.

As often as Sirius is up, he’s down—forever locked in this constant battle of polar opposites. These are the days he can’t survive without his friends. He leeches off of them and their kindness, nothing more than a supermassive black hole devouring everything in his path.

He’s already destroyed Remus.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise. He tried to warn him once, in the depths of a long, hard winter when he was just thirteen, his mother’s madness running through his veins even then.

That night, the snow fell gently across the sleeping castle like a soft, white blanket, muting the world and all its chaos with whispers of snowflakes and ghostly renditions of “Silent Night.” His dorm mates snuffled softly into their pillows, a welcome change from the window-rattling snoring of exhausted teenage boys.

Waxing moonlight glinted off the keen edge of a knife as Sirius dipped the blade into his soft, pale skin and drew fat crimson droplets. They welled to the surface, swelling into puddles that trickled down his arm and pooled in the crease at his elbow. He drew another sharp line with a soft hiss, connecting it to the first, and then another to complete the triangle as the ratty book in his lap described, working line-by-line to carve the runes into his flesh.

The knife slipped through his wet fingers and clattered on the ground, disrupting the silence of an otherwise peaceful night. He froze, heart hammering loud enough to hear as Peter grumbled in his sleep and rolled onto his stomach. Bathed in moonlight and covered in blood spells, he dared not move until Peter’s breathing eased back into the quiet whispering of sleep, and only then did he creep out of bed to retrieve his knife.

“Sirius?”

He jerked upright in surprise to find Remus’s keen eyes dismantling the situation with precision.

“What did you do?”

There was no judgement in his question, only the concern of a fragile boy as he threw off his duvet and came to kneel beside Sirius on the cold floor, his own scarred hands gently cradling his wrist as he peered at the crude protective runes scrawled across his arms.

It felt as if all the words in the room had been sucked into the vacuum of space; his lips moved soundlessly as he tried and failed to speak.

Finally, he managed a tight:

“I’m cursed.”

“And you think these will help?” asked Remus carefully, with a yearning to understand, like Sirius was nothing more than a difficult spell theory.

Sirius looked up at him with pleading eyes. “Don’t tell James.”

He squeezed his hand reassuringly. “I won’t.”

He sagged with relief. Remus helped him back into bed and deposited the knife in the back of an unused drawer where James would never find it; then, he climbed into bed with him and wrapped his arms around him in a way Sirius’s own mother never had.

Pressed against each other with the winter chill nipping at their backs, he whispered, “I don’t think you’re cursed.”

It was the last words Sirius heard that night before he fell asleep, and the words he’s carried with him every day since. But there’s no denying it now: the monster Remus dreads of himself resides within Sirius’s veins.

It’s only a matter of time.

—

_Bonjour!_

_France is bloody amazing. The beaches are gorgeous and you should see the birds—I’m completely over Lily-bloody-Evans! Let her and Snivellus make greasy-haired brats for all I care._

_About Sirius—I haven’t been able to reach him either. I wouldn’t put it past his nutter of a mum to have done something horrid. Dad says if I don’t hear from him by the time we get back to England, then I can pop down to London to check up on him._

_I’ll keep you lads updated._

_Prongs_

—

The rift in the Marauders’s friendship is an ever-widening gully that threatens to consume everything in its path. Rumors spread like Fiendfyre across the expanse of the castle—from the top of Ravenclaw tower where Gilderoy Lockhart insists that he saved Lupin from a savage beating by Potter and Black (“Gave ‘em the old one-two, didn’t I? Lupin was knocked out cold when I stepped in—poor bloke doesn’t remember a thing!”) to the depths of Slytherin’s dungeons where Avery surmises the blood traitor Black must’ve finally overstayed his welcome.

However, despite their outlandish differences, every loose rumor can agree on two facts: that Remus was the victim, and that whatever happened broke a friendship stronger than brotherhood.

The days drag by; the rumors escalate; and the era of the Marauders fades without even the dying note of a swan song to sing it sweetly to death.

But then again, Sirius decides, death would be kinder than this living hell.

—

_Padfoot,_

_Are you all right?_

_Moony_

—

It’s a dreary July day, storms clouds brewing overhead, threatening a summer downpour, and Sirius runs blindly out the door and into the busy Muggle street, his mother’s _Crucio!_ on his heels.

“DON’T YOU DARE SHAME THIS HOUSE BY STEPPING FOOT INSIDE EVER AGAIN OR I WILL SKIN YOU ALIVE AND HANG YOUR HEAD ON THE WALL LIKE A HOUSE ELF!”

“I’d rather get fucked by a centaur than step foot inside this dump again, hag!”

“You VILE, UNGRATEFUL—“

The door slams shut and Number 12 disappears behind its ancient Fidelius Charm.

“Good bloody riddance,” mutters Sirius.

Blood dribbles down his cheek from a nasty gash. He wipes at it distractedly as he hurries away from the house that has been his nightmare for the past sixteen years.

He has no where to go, and despite his Gryffindor bravery, fear seeps into his bones. It is the fear brought to existence by strange men in black cloaks, by a whispered _Imperio!_ in the dead of night, and by the soft caress of dark curses that make him forget who he is. He shivers despite the summer heat and pulls his leather jacket closer to his body as he checks over his shoulder for a faceless enemy.

“Pull yourself together, Sirius,” he commands, scrubbing at his face.

He takes a deep breath and looks up. The streets criss-cross and curve around antique buildings as low, grey clouds unleash a soft, fine mist. Nothing looks familiar. Sirius may have spent his entire life in London, but rarely was he allowed to venture beyond Grimmauld Place’s claustrophobic walls. He might as well be in Budapest.

He doesn’t even have his wand or his trunk. They’re still locked away in the cellar, guarded by his mother’s prized Lethifold. It would almost be worth the certain death to slip back into the manor and set it free to eat the flesh off their bones. But the idea of returning to that house of horrors keeps his feet pointed in the opposite direction. He’d rather feed himself to a chimera than step foot inside that place ever again.

“Apparition it is.”

While technically illegal and whilst not strictly licensed yet, Sirius has been practicing all summer for an occasion such as this. He’d even managed a full apparition last week. Of course, he’d only ever apparated successfully within the confines of his room—never across the entire country—but still, success is success, and Sirius is nothing if not daring.

He plants his feet firmly and focuses on his destination. Then, imagining the look on James’s face when he shows up out of thin air with a smirk of satisfaction, he turns on his heel and prays he doesn’t end up in Siberia without a nose.

—

They pass by each other in the corridor, shoulders brushing with a whisper of wind, and it doesn’t matter who draws first—their wands are raised in the space between heartbeats, dangerous curses in the cracks of their lips.

“I think you owe me an apology, Black.” His words hiss between his teeth, mouth curled into a cruel snarl.

“I’m sorry you mum never taught you how to use shampoo,” he replies flippantly, fingers coiled tightly around his wand. “It’s such a pity.”

Snape growls like a feral, unwashed animal. “You’re an arrogant bastard, Black. You nearly killed me—you should be expelled!”

“And so should you for trying to reveal Remus,” replies Sirius with a cold, dangerous stare. “You may have Dumbledore convinced, but I know you’re rotten to the core, _Snivellus_. You wouldn’t shed a tear if all the Muggleborns in the school dropped dead—not even your darling Lily-flower. So fuck me if I don’t crawl on my knees and beg for your fucking forgiveness. I grew up with an entire family of you, and I’ll drop dead before I apologize to a pathetic blood purist.”

_“Sectumsempra!”_

Sirius narrowly dodges and fires back with a Stinging Hex that grazes his leg. Snape rolls to the ground and catches him off-guard with a curse that sends him flying across the corridor. It slams him into the stone wall and he crumples, sharp pain shooting up his spine.

“What’s going on here?”

Suddenly, viscerally, Sirius wishes Snape had maimed or killed him—anything to avoid the disappointment in Remus’s eyes as he surveys their little scene, his prefect’s badge gleaming on his chest.

“Lupin to the rescue,” sneers Snape. “Come to finish what you started the other night?”

Remus purses his lips together quietly and looks from Sirius to Snape. “Fighting in the corridor is a mandatory ten points from each house and four hours of detention.”

“If you think I’m going to listen to a half-breed like you—“

“I _think_ ,” interrupts Remus coldly, “you’ll listen a _prefect_ like me or I’ll take it to the Deputy Headmistress. Now get to class.”

Snape turns to Sirius, and the two boys, both more similar in circumstance than they’d ever dare admit, glare at each other with anger in their hearts and choose their paths.

“Remus…”

Remus finally turns to him as Snape stalks away, his gaze as cold as ice. “That means you too, Sirius. I’m only repeating myself because it seems like you have trouble listening. Or perhaps you purposefully forgot the time I asked you to leave Snape alone?”

Sirius’s soul collapses in on itself, the pain stealing his breath from his lungs.

“I…”

“Don’t bother with excuses. I don’t want to hear them.”

And then he walks away, and Sirius’s universe crashes into itself.

—

(“It’s a brand,” Sirius spits, “like fucking chattel.”)

He wonders, _is it worth it?_

—

“I told you something was wrong—“

“—should’ve come back sooner—“

“I think he’s waking up!”

A fuzzy, bespectacled boy fades into view like dim sun through a fog, and then Sirius finds himself staring into the worried brown eyes of James Potter.

He groans, long and low, as pain engulfs him. Everything hurts, muscles he didn’t even know he had protesting in agony.

James hovers nearby, brows pinched together worriedly behind his glasses. “Are you all right?—what hurts?—are you bleeding?”

“Let him breath, James,” chastises Mrs. Potter from somewhere above him, just out of his line of sight, then adds to Sirius, “Try not to move too much, dear. You splinched yourself quite impressively. I’ve mended it as best I can, but the skin’s still new and sensitive. It’ll need another day or two of proper healing to be set right.”

Ignoring her warning, he pushes himself upright and hisses as bandages pull at the edges of fresh, pink skin across his torso. “Ow,” he groans, lying back down on the soft down pillow.

“I did warn you,” she tuts at his grimace.

“Do I still have all my bits n’ bobs?” he asks James, who looks for one second like he’s considering some terrible payback for that time in second year when Sirius charmed off his eyebrows in the middle of the night.

But James relents, possibly out of pity, and reassuringly squeezes his shoulder. “It’s all there, mate. Your reputation as Hogwarts’s biggest slag is still in tact.”

“Least there’s that,” he says, sinking into the sheets.

“You need a good, strong cuppa,” says Mrs. Potter, excusing herself to the kitchen. “Try not to over-exert him, Jaime dear.”

“Yeah, _Jaime dear_ , try not to exert me,” laughs Sirius as James flushes. His side begins to ache as he chortles, and his laughter gives way to pathetic moaning.

“Bloody hell, they weren’t joking about splinching, were they?”

“Can’t believe you apparated all the way from London. You’re mental!”

“Yeah, well,” he says with a sigh as the pain ebbs, “didn’t have much of a choice.”

He feels James shift uncomfortably on the bed, and he wishes suddenly that he could be anywhere other than here, because he knows what’s coming next and there’s nothing in the world he wants less.

“You wanna talk about it?”

Exhaustion creeps through his bones, the last twenty-four hours of his life crushing him under the weight of its gravity.

_(The snake writhes across his brother’s smooth skin, the black menacing skull staining its pale canvas._

_“It’s a brand,” he spits in revulsion, “like fucking chattel. You’re bloody mental if you think I’m letting that nutter put one on me!”_

_His father backhands him, the family crest cutting into his cheek. He can feel the blood slide down his jaw as his mother raises her wand and begins to scream.)_

“I’m all right, Prongs.”

It’s a lie. They both pretend they don’t know that.


	3. Parallax

They all become very good at lying in the end.

—

Breakfast becomes a charade in which they all pretend nothing’s wrong, even when everything is. Remus sits across the table with Peter, and James sits on the other side with Sirius while they sip their tea and pretend the crack in their friendship isn’t spreading at an alarming rate. Fellow students side-eye them over steaming bowls of porridge, but Sirius thankfully stops opening his mouth after the first few days, and Remus kindly pretends he doesn’t exist, leaving James and Peter to pick up the pieces of a conversation that doesn’t slot together anymore.

“I’ve been thinking of ideas for our Halloween prank,” says James as he pulls out several pieces of crumpled parchment from his pocket. It’s two weeks to Halloween, and he’ll be damned if they miss this year because of a tiff.

“Count me out,” mutters Sirius as he pushes up from the table with a quick glance towards Remus, who is clearly only pretending to be engrossed in his copy of _The Daily Prophet_.

James halts, halfway done with smoothing out the first parchment. “Where’re you going?”

“Dunno. Maybe I’ll study.”

His eyes linger on Remus for just a moment, waiting for any sort of reaction—a twitch of his brow, a pursing of his lips—but none comes. He recoils as if slapped and slings his book bag over his shoulder vigorously as he propels himself from the hall.

James twists in his seat with a frown and pins it on Remus. “You need to talk to him.”

Remus doesn’t look up from his paper as he takes a sip of tea and winces. “I don’t believe I _need_ to do anything.”

“Padfoot’s been trying apologize for days, but you keep ignoring him!”

Peter shoves half a pastry into his mouth nervously as Remus carefully folds his paper at the creases and taps his wand on the rim of his tea cup, letting the steam rise before he takes a satisfied testing sip.

“Perhaps _Sirius_ should take into consideration that some things can’t be fixed by a few sad, drunken apologies.”

It takes all of James’s limited self-control not to slam his fists on the table. “What do you want from him?”

Carefully, he sets his teacup back in its saucer, his fingers deft and controlled. But for all his restraint, there’s wolfish anger in his eyes that nearly makes James flinch. “I’d like,” he answers lowly, so the group of fourth year girls down the table can’t overhear, “for him to realize the egregiousness of his actions.”

“He does!” he exclaims with the exasperation of someone pitted in an argument against a brick wall.

“Does he?” When he opens his mouth to come to Sirius’s defence, he adds, “Do _you_?”

“Don’t try to pin this on me. I’m the one who saved Snivellus, remember?”

Remus’s reply skewers him like a stake through his heart: “For me or for Sirius?”

Peter chokes suddenly on the crumbs of his pastry, and it takes James two minutes of good, hard back-thumping across the table to set him right. With each hard swing, the anger inside him boils.

“All right, Pete?” Marlene calls from down the table. She and Dorcas Meadowes have been watching them out of the corners of their eyes all throughout breakfast.

“Yeah…” he manages weakly through his wheezing, leaving James to seethe in silence.

“I’m not choosing sides,” he hisses once their audience has disappeared under the guise of disinterest.

Remus splays his fingers across the headline of his paper (“WHO IS THIS ‘DARK LORD’ ANYWAY?”) and levels his gaze at James. “You didn’t have to.”

James pushes away from the table without a word, not trusting his own voice not to betray him. No matter how hard he tries to tighten his hold on their fractured group, the shards of their friendship keep slipping through his fingers. Sirius is barely present anymore, constantly skipping classes and staying out past curfew without excuses, and now Remus doesn’t trust him. He can’t stop the splintering—he doesn’t know where to even begin.

They were supposed to be inseparable.

“That’s not on, mate,” Peter tells off Remus as James storms out of the Great Hall, out onto the grounds, and down towards the Quidditch pitch. If he wasn’t so damn upset he’d be proud of Peter, who’s come such a long way since he was a nail-biting first year.

Saturday morning means Quidditch try-outs, and he’s still fuming with anger as he shucks off his robes in the locker room and pulls on his uniform. The season’s already begun, but since Sirius went and got himself kicked off the team, he’s one Beater short from burying Slytherin in the dirt.

He slams his foot against the wall and curses.

He kicks it again. And again. And again, and again until his foot throbs angrily and begins to swell in his boot; but even the shooting pain up his calf can’t distract him from everything falling apart around him.

Hi shoulders slump in defeat as he takes a breath to steady himself before limping up to the pitch. He’s early for the ten o’clock tryouts, but Eadie Toke, one of his fellow Chasers, has already beaten him there. She sits on the grass polishing her Cleansweep lovingly.

“Potter.”

“Toke.”

“You going to finally tell us why we need another Beater or should I start spreading ugly rumors?”

James’s team meeting last week had been brief and short-tempered. He’d barely managed to inform them that McGonagall had given her approval to hold mid-season tryouts before he’d stormed up to the dormitory in a fit. Anytime they’d tried to corner him in the corridors afterward, he’d made some excuse about homework before ducking down busy corridors or into the loo. He’d even disappeared under his invisibility cloak once or twice when they’d kept dogging his steps.

“Watch it, Toke, or I might just end up replacing you too,” he snaps.

She rolls her eyes as she stands and brushes the grass from her robes. “Whatever you say, _O captain! My captain_!”

“Huh?”

“Never mind.”

His team slowly begins to file in. None of them seem terribly pleased to see him, which, granted, he wouldn’t be either if they’d snapped at him the way he did at the team meeting, but they have a job to do, and he’s not going to take their lip. Not today.

“No—not a chance in hell—“

He jumps on his broom and speeds across the pitch, pulling up sharply next to Marlene and Dorcas, who’ve entered hand-in-hand. “Meadowes has got to go. No spies.”

“Oh stuff it, Potter,” snaps Marlene, “she’s bloody Head Girl.”

“Not to mention you’ve already given Hufflepuff a _kind_ thrashing,” adds Dorcas, with an unpleasant grimace.

He crosses his arms over his chest stubbornly. “You could still sell the information to Slytherin or Ravenclaw.”

“Are you mental?”

He refuses to budge. It’s a three-minute standoff before Dorcas rolls her eyes and pecks Marlene on the cheek. “Forget it. You can tell me everything when you get back.

“Good luck with that,” she adds under her breath, just loud enough for him to hear.

He opens his mouth to spit back something equally sarcastic and mean-spirited, but she’s halfway up the hill before he can think of anything. As he turns back around, Marlene slugs him in the arm. Hard.

“You’re an arse, y’know that?”

“She’s a _Hufflepuff_ —“

“And Cordelia Montgomery’s a Ravenclaw, but you still let her come watch when you two were shagging.”

He scowls. “That was different.”

“How?” she challenges.

He doesn’t respond, and she jumps on his silence. “Look, I don’t know what’s going on with you four great idiots, but it’s no reason to get your knickers in a twist. We’ve got a match against Slytherin to worry about in a few weeks, and we need a captain who can lead us, not one who mopes around on his broom all day and broods about how sad his life is.”

“I don’t brood—“

She cuts him off. “I get you and Sirius are mates and all, but we’ll find another Beater, all right? There are plenty of other gnomes in the garden, as they say. Get your bloody head in the game, yeah?”

For all his pride, he nods reluctantly. As much as he hates to admit it, she’s right. Sirius isn’t coming back, and he has to find a new Beater or forfeit the season, which isn’t an option.

“Good lad. Now let’s go have a look at this sorry lot.”

He slides off his broom and follows her back to the rest of the team. He dodges their icy glares with a wince and curls his lips up into what he hopes is a friendly smile.

“Morning, team!”

They grunt their responses, and he takes it for a win. “Right, well, we all know why we’re here. So we’ll play a quick scrimmage and test out some Beaters. Ginger, Caradoc—you’ll both stand in as Chasers so it’s equal sides; I’ll watch from the sideline. Margo, you’ve got the last word in this nomination. You and Sirius had a good rhythm, and we can’t afford to lose that in upcoming matches. Sound good? Let’s go!”

The team breaks and kicks off while James turns to greet the growing crowd of hopefuls. “Listen, you lot: I’m only replacing one Beater, so if you’re looking for a different position, bug off.” A second year swears and storms off. “No firsties either—that means you three,” he adds, pointing to three nervous-looking eleven-year-olds who scatter like mice.

He looks on the remaining group grimly.

There are five left: McLaggen and another fourth year boy James doesn’t know the name of; a third year girl gripping white knuckles around her broomstick; Sean Smith, a reedy fifth year with dreadlocks pulled back at the nape of his neck; and Dirk Cresswell, whom James had never considered very athletic.

_They’re no Sirius_ , he thinks with a sinking heart.

“ _Accio trunk_!”

The trunk of Quidditch supplies levitates to him. He lowers it to the grass and unlocks it, tossing the Quaffle to Marlene. She and Eadie begin a game of keep-away while Caradoc and Ginger chase after them. He squints into the morning sun as he watches them for a moment, then pulls out the Beater bats and hands one to Margo and the other to the anxious girl.

“What’s your name?”

“Dima Voskoboynikova.”

“Er, sure. You’ll go one at a time in ten minute scrimmages. Try to knock them off their brooms if you can.”

He grabs his Nimbus 1001 and launches himself into the air, soaring above the pitch to watch the match. It’s clear from the moment Dima takes off that she’s rotten on a broom. She wobbles in the air and struggles to keep hold on both her broom and the bat. When she drops the bat, she dives after it but misjudges how close she is to the ground and skids across the grass.

He sighs. This is going to be a long trial.

She looks utterly relieved once James finally blows his whistle, signaling the end of her turn. In ten minutes, the only thing she’s managed to hit is herself and has ended up covered in cuts, bruises, and grass stains. He orders her up to the hospital wing before moving onto McLaggen and his friend. They’re decent enough, but their combined ego makes him wonder how they can even get off the ground. McLaggen spends most of his time pulling aerial stunts, letting Ginger score several goals before James has to tell him off.

Dirk Cresswell ends up giving Dima a run for her money. He can’t handle the Bludger, and when he nearly unseats James for a third time, he shoots after him screaming, “CRESSWELL, I SWEAR TO GODRIC IF YOU HIT THAT BLUDGER TOWARDS ME ONE MORE TIME, I’M GOING TO HIT YOU OVER THE HEAD WITH THAT BAT!”

James has already begun to think of the best way to break the bad news to McGonagall when Sean Smith takes to the air. In James’s opinion, he’s too reedy for a good Beater; his build would make a better Chaser or Seeker. The Bludger arc towards him, as if it’s sensed fresh meat. James turns his head to the side so he doesn’t have to watch the impending crash.

_CRACK!_

The Bludger connects with the bat and bolts across the pitch, catching the tail of Marlene’s broom and sending her crashing into the goalpost. Margo whoops joyously as Sean, smirking and still very much on his broom, holds up his bat like a victory trophy.

They have their Beater, and though he will never admit it aloud, he might just be better than Sirius.

“Better luck next time,” James tells the rest as the team crowds around Sean, congratulating him with high-fives and shoulder claps.

He presents him with an official uniform, transfiguring BLACK on the back to SMITH with less reservation than he would’ve expected.

“All right gents and ladies, I’ve already asked McGonagall for extra practices so we can all get on the same page. We’ll meet here Monday afternoon at four o’clock. Don’t be late or I’ll make you lot run laps!”

They wave him off with a laugh as they head to the lockers to change. He follows behind them, cleaning up their discarded balls and bats as he goes. He bends to pull the Snitch free from its case, and when he looks up again, Remus is standing at the edge of the pitch.

“Didn’t see you in the stands,” he just manages. If his tone is a bit colder than usual, who can blame him?

“I came in late. I wanted to catch you before you left.”

“Oh?”

He hauls the trunk into the storage closet, ignoring Remus’s attempts to help.

“Look,” he sighs as James fiddles with the lock. “I was an arse earlier, and I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said what I did.”

James purses his lips, annoyed to find his anger siphoning away as quickly as it came. “You know I’d never be able to choose among you lot. You’re my brothers— _all of you_. Until we die, and after: ghost-brothers.”

Remus reluctantly curls his lips, and something in James’s chest eases.

“I know what Sirius did was utter shite, and you’ve got every right not to forgive him. I just—“ He runs a hand through his hair, a nervous habit he’s never managed to quit. “I just want everything to go back to normal.”

There’s a long silence. Remus pokes his thumb through a worn hole in his jumper and looks up apologetically.

“I don’t know if it can.”

“Because you love him?”

James has always been observant. It’s what makes him a good captain and a good Marauder. He can see things others can’t or refuse to see. He’s known Remus’s feelings for Sirius for years, probably even before the scrawny thirteen-year-old did. He doesn’t blame him; Sirius is like the sun, and most days it feels like they all revolve around his gravitational pull.

Remus stiffens, but his eyes reveal what doesn’t leave his lips. “I didn’t say that.”

James is quiet, the truth sitting between them heavily. Then, with the weariness of a boy carrying the weight of the world on his back, he shrugs.

“You didn’t have to.”

 

 


	4. Lunar Eclipse

“Mr. Potter, where is Mr. Black?"

McGonagall’s quill is poised in the air above Sirius’s name as she takes roll, a fat droplet of ink dangling precariously from the tip as she waits.

James’s brow furrows with worry, the seat next to him conspicuously empty. “I dunno, Professor.”

She purses her lips and turns to Remus. “Mr. Lupin?”

“Not a clue, Professor.”

Peter stiffens as she inevitably swivels her head in his direction. “Mr. Pettigrew?”

He fidgets under her stern gaze. “He wasn’t at lunch either.” Or breakfast. Or Herbology. 

Her quill scratches the parchment as she marks him absent. “Well, if he does deem to show up anytime this century, perhaps you could tell him I’d like to speak to him in my office?”

He nods quickly, relief rushing through him as her gaze falls back to her desk and the list of names on it.

The problem with having friends like James and Sirius, he’s decided, is the overwhelming sense of inadequacy that accompanies those friendships. They’re talented, good-looking, and popular, which Peter will never be. Their shadows are long and dark, eclipsing everything in their path. Even when they fuck up monumentally, they’re still adored by both students and staff.

They don’t understand just how good they have it. James mopes about Quidditch, and Sirius broods about his family, but neither of them understand the struggle of being told repeatedly that their entire existence is inconsequential.

Only his mother has never doubted him. Only she’s seen his true talent.

He doesn’t know why they befriended him. He’s suspected for many years it was because Remus did first, and they wanted to be friends with him. He loves them like brothers, but he knows he cares for them more than they for him.

He’s not smart like Remus. He’s not funny like Sirius. He’s not athletic like James.

The void Sirius has left is deep, dark, and formidable, and Peter is incapable of filling it. He knows he offers little to the group, and a familiar worry grows in the pit of his stomach:

If this fight continues, if the Marauders split up for good, which side will choose him?

Will anyone?

—

When Lily Evans is nine, she doesn’t know more about magic than any other nine-year-old. Magic is a thing of books, and there is surely a scientific reason the flowers change color whenever she walks past.

Perhaps she’ll learn it in secondary school. 

When she is eleven, she learns that even magic has rules, but that these rules can be bent, manipulated, and even broken. She spends hours in the library with Severus, pouring over old Potions textbooks, scribbling down useful recipes into the journal her mother bought her for her birthday.

Sometimes quills are too unruly to write with, so she keeps a ballpoint pen tucked in the bottom of her book bag. Severus makes fun of her, but she never runs out of ink.

When she’s thirteen, Slughorn invites her to the Slug Club, and she kisses Bertram Aubrey at the annual Christmas supper party. Severus refuses to talk to her for a week unless she apologizes (she doesn’t) and only concedes his anger when she tells him that they were trapped underneath the mistletoe (they weren’t) and honestly, _it wasn’t even that good, Severus_ (it was).

When she’s fifteen, James Potter asks her out for the tenth time, and she’s about had it with stupid boys and their stupid hormones, and now she can’t even go running to her best friend because she doesn’t have one anymore. Severus called her a mudblood in front of the entire school, and she’ll never forgive him for that.

She doesn’t cry because there’s no point in wasting tears on him. She’s seen the changes coming, seen the people he’s been hanging around; she’s spent three years begging him to stop, but he hasn’t, and he won’t.

She’s sixteen now, and James Potter is the biggest idiot she’s ever laid eyes on—arrogant, hopelessly and annoyingly aware of his own good looks, and too talented to take his school work seriously.

Potter is the sort of boy who’s had everything handed to him on a silver platter, unlike Lily who’s spent hours and days and weeks and months striving to catch up with her peers after a decade in the Muggle world. He’s always the first to accomplish a task in Transfiguration, he’s undoubtedly the best flier in Gryffindor, and he can charm the ears off an elf and have it thank him for it.

But on the other hand—James Potter is terrible at Potions.

So are his three other friends, except Peter, who manages passable grades when he isn’t listening to Potter and Black bicker over how much beetroot to add.

She should be ecstatic that her grades are better than his.

And yet.

His bad grades have somehow become _her_ problem.

Perhaps Professor Slughorn wanted to challenge her formidable skills, or maybe he realized (after Potter and Black nearly destroyed the dungeon— _again_ ) that keeping those two together did more harm than good, but either way, at the end of last week, he pulled her aside after class to inform her that he was reassigning Potter to be her new Potions partner.

Permanently.

“Honestly, if you’re just going to sit there and drool on the parchment, hand it to me and I’ll finish it,” she snaps at him as he leans against the table with a vacant expression, ink dripping across the sentence he wrote five minutes ago.

“Huh?” He blinks dazedly, then looks down at the parchment and groans. “Merlin’s blue balls…”

She rolls her eyes as she taps the parchment with her wand, siphoning away the spilled ink. It isn’t that Potter is hopelessly thick. He understands the theories behind potions and can recite them with ease. But he has little talent or patience for brewing, and often becomes distracted in the middle of potion-making. And homework.

“Ta,” he mutters gratefully, pressing the palms of his hands to his eyes.

She purses her lips disdainfully. “The essay’s due tomorrow.”

“Really?” He scowls. “I hadn’t noticed. We’ve only be pouring over these books for hours.”

“Well, maybe if you’d done your part earlier this week _when I’d asked_ —“

His expression darkens miserably, and she has the sudden sinking feeling that she’s overstepped some invisible line. “I was dealing with something.”

But as quickly as it comes, it’s gone, like the shadow of Earth across the moon. “Look,” he says, “why don’t you go? You’ve got rounds, right? I’ll finish up, and you can read over it in the morning and fix what I wrote.”

She hesitates. “That’s weirdly thoughtful of you, Potter.”

“Well, can’t be a tosser all the time, can I?”

The smile across his lips doesn’t meet his eyes, but she pretends she can’t see it as she packs up her belongings and slings her bag across her shoulders. “Don’t stay out too late,” she warns. “I’d hate to give you detention for breaking curfew.”

Madam Pince sniffs loudly behind them as he leans back on the legs of his chair, balancing precariously. “Don’t lie, Evans; you’d love it.”

The corners of her lips curl upward. “Perhaps.”

—

Remus meets Lily in the corridor as the clock strikes nine. First- and second-year students scurry off to their dormitories in a frenzy as curfew sets in, the stragglers side-stepping them as candlelight catches the golden ‘P’ of their Prefect badges.

“I assume you’ve killed James and buried him in the Restricted Section?” jokes Remus as they begin their rounds, the corridor emptying out without their help. 

“It surely would’ve saved me a headache,” she admits with a weary sigh. “Oi, Cresswell, get to bed.”

Dirk’s younger brother scrambles past them hurriedly.

“You learn to live with the headaches after awhile.”

She laughs. “I can’t imagine how many you’ve suffered from Potter’s shenanigans.”

He thinks back over all the years and their extensive catalog of pranks and adventures. Yes, James has caused him more than a few headaches and mishaps, but he wouldn’t trade those experiences for the world. “I’ve lost count.”

Their feet walk the familiar path easily. It was on this very patrol that Remus revealed his deepest, darkest secret to her when she’d confronted him last year. He’d been so utterly terrified, shaking and pale as death, the crude tase of acid in the back of his throat. But she’d taken his hand firmly, looked him in the eyes without fear, and said, “I won’t judge you for being a werewolf if you won’t judge me for being Muggleborn.”

And Remus, who’d been so overwhelmed it took him a full minute to process what she’d said, looked at her and replied, “Why would I ever do a thing like that?”

But he saw now, the point she’d been trying to make. Hatred against Muggleborns is growing stronger day-by-day, poisoning the world both inside and outside the thick stone walls of Hogwarts. He knows how hard it is to be hated for something uncontrollable.

“I’m sorry,” he says suddenly.

Her loafers pause on the stone floor. “For what?”

He pulls at a loose thread on the sleeve of his jumper. “I never checked to see how you were that day at the lake.”

“Oh.” A thousand different emotions cross her face; her shoulders seem to slump with each one. “It’s all right. I’m fine.”

“Really?”

She sucks her lower lip between her teeth and lets out a weighty breath. “No,” she admits. “I’m not. But—I dunno, I guess I expected it at some point. He’s been hanging around those Slytherin pricks for years. The _Death Eaters_ , they call themselves,” she scoffs, “as if that’s something to aspire to—to be one of _his_ followers. Like he’s some great leader when he’s really just a hateful, evil person.”

She wipes angry tears from the corners of her eyes and smiles apologetically. “I didn’t mean to go off on a rant. I just…do you know how depressing it is to find out you’re this magical, wonderful thing, only to get here and realize everyone hates you because of something you can’t control?”

He squeezes her arm sympathetically. “A little bit, yeah.”

A watery laugh bubbles out of her. “Of course you do; I’m sorry, it was stupid of me to say.”

“It wasn’t stupid,” he promises. “I think a lot of Muggleborns come here thinking it’ll be like a fairytale, but it’s just the same in here as it is out there in the Muggle world: politics, discrimination…it never really goes away.”

“Merlin, that’s depressing, Remus.”

He snorts. “You’re telling me.”

The night grows later. Their footsteps echo in the silence of the corridor as curfew arrives for the older students, leaving the domain of the castle to the professors and Mr. Filch. They make their way back to Gryffindor tower, checking the corridors for stragglers one last time before they arrive at the portrait hole.

“Hey, Remus…?” Lily begins carefully.

“Yes?”

“What happened with you four?”

Something painful swells in his throat, making it difficult to breath. “Oh, that? Nothing important.”

“I don’t believe you,” she says stubbornly, crossing her arms over her chest.

“It’s…” He waves his hand uselessly, tongue tying itself into frustrating knots. “It’s the ass end of a hippogriff, honestly.”

She smiles sympathetically. “I’m here if you ever need to talk.”

“Thanks, Lily,” he murmurs. “You’re a good friend.”

“Just a good friend?”

A significant stiffness falls between them. He hesitates a fraction too long, and eager hope drains from her face, her dimples settling into the mildly disappointed frown she usually reserves for James.

It isn’t that Lily isn’t attractive. He’s listened to James wax poetic about her freckles and emerald eyes long enough to objectively understand that she is quite pretty for a girl. But the truth of the matter is that Remus has never found girls attractive. Oh, maybe once he fancied a Muggle girl in primary school, and there was that time in second year when Emmeline Vance bat her eyes at him and his heart pitter-pattered for a whole week. Perhaps he would find girls attractive if he ever snogged one, but he’s never had any interest in getting that far with any of them. Sirius has been the brightest star in his sky for so long that everyone else pales in comparison.

Even when he’s angry with him, even when he’s disavowed him and sworn never to think of the way his fingers might run through his silken hair—when he’s told himself time and time again that he doesn’t love him, _can’t_ love him anymore, because how could he love such a terrible person?—an awful, weak part of him still wants him in all the wrong ways.

“It’s okay,” she interrupts before he can find a delicate way to turn her down.“I understand. I’ve seen the way you look at him.”

His shoulders sink with the burden of it all. “It’s not that simple.”

“It never is,” says Lily, squeezing his hand. “Just remember—if he’s hurt you—he’s not the entire universe. There are other stars in the sky, you know. And they’re just as beautiful.”

Her words echo in the dark, haunting him as he follows her into the portrait and beyond.

—

Could he find another star?


	5. New Moon

“Good morning, class,” Professor Popplewell chirps cheerfully as the ancient witch limps to her desk. Varying levels of sleepy apathy return her greeting.

She tuts at their lack of enthusiasm but doesn’t comment. Her fragile hands with skin so fragile it seems it might tear with even the lightest breeze shake as she lifts a thickly-bound book (which looks all together too heavy for the ailing professor) and drops it in front of her with a loud _clap!_ Several sleepy-eyed students jerk awake at their desks.

“That’s better,” she says spritely. Marlene snorts.

“Wands away, please. Today is a theoretical lesson.”

James groans loudly and slumps in his seat.

“Theory is just as important, Mr. Potter,” she scolds sternly. “Sometimes it can even save your life.”

Peter raises a timid hand. “How so, Professor?”

She holds up a creased Muggle newspaper for the class to see. The bold headline reads **MISSING FAMILY FOUND TIED TO STAKES, BURNED ALIVE**. Even still life, the picture below paints a gruesome tale—fire crackles with heat, the flames flickering against charred remains. If James squints hard enough, he can pick out a child-sized lump of them among the ashes.

Several students gasp, and next to him, Peter looks faintly ill. Even James’s own stomach roils. He turns his head away from the carnage and spots Lily a few desks down glaring at the picture fiercely, her hands balled into white-knuckled fists in her lap. He has the sudden urge to reach out and take her hand.

“Muggle police reported that the fire burned relentlessly for hours, at a much higher temperature than normal. The wind caught the flames and caused it to also destroy several nearby farms and fields. What can we surmise from this report?”

Mary raises her hand. “It’s a magical flame.”

Professor Popplewell nods. “Very good. How did you come to that conclusion?”

“The length of the burning,” she answers, “and the intensity.”

“Well done. Five points to Gryffindor.”

She sets the paper aside and hobbles to the front of the class. “However, there are over fifty different types of magical flames, and each has their own unique way of dealing with them. Mr. Lupin, can you describe one way which we might be able to differentiate between varieties of fires?”

Remus purses his lips like he always does when he’s thinking carefully. “Some flames leave behind a magical residue or an imprint.”

“Indeed,” she nods. “Miss Fawley?”

“Ashwinders,” replies Alice from beside Lily. “They’re formed in the embers of certain fires that burn too long.”

“Yes, yes,” says Popplewell, clapping her aging hands together with the enthusiasm of a much younger witch. “All wonderful answers. Would anyone care to guess what type of curse caused this destruction?”

She looks from the Gryffindors to the Ravenclaws expectantly, and when no one answers for several long, awkward moments, she finally puts them out of their misery. “This is a particularly nasty one. It was a favorite of old Grindelwald’s back in the day. It’s called Fiendfyre—has anyone heard of it?”

James can feel Sirius tense beside him as several of the Ravenclaws glance at him out of the corners of their eyes, as people always do around Sirius when discussing the Dark Arts. Sirius crosses his arms over his chest and scowls at them. When he doesn’t respond to Popplewell, they sink back into their chairs, disappointed he hasn’t proven himself as an offspring of darkness.

“Fiendfyre has sentient-like qualities, but it is not sentient as many claim. It doesn’t have the ability to think for itself or choose its path; it can only destroy. It will burn for days and weeks and travel across countries if it has enough fuel. This one stayed in the county, but there are historical reports of fires burning from Paris to Rome and even jumping over the Mediterranean Sea. Given the chance, it will destroy everything.”

Abigail Wexley, normally a rather reserved Ravenclaw, lifts her hand to interrupt her.

“Professor—why were the Muggles attacked?”

It’s clear that this is the question on everyone’s mind, as students suddenly lean forward in their chairs, all signs of sleepiness vanished.

“Now, we mustn’t give the perpetrators too much credit,” she begins carefully. “Dark magic attracts the power-hungry to conquer the powerless. It may simply be that these Muggles were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Or maybe they were chosen because they were Muggles.” Lily’s bold statement punctuates the room.

Popplewell purses her lips, looking as though she is trying and failing to come up with any way to dismiss her. “I suppose that is a possibility…”

“I thought the Dark Lord only disliked Muggleborns,” someone in the back speaks up. “Why should he give a rat’s ass about Muggles?”

“Are you daft? Where d’you think Muggleborns come from?” snaps Mary. “If he gets rid of the Muggles, he gets rid of us.”

“It won’t really happen, will it?” chimes in Peter nervously. “A war?”

“Now, now, let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” tuts Popplewell, trying to reign in the conversation. “You’re much too young to worry about these sorts of things. Leave that kind of talk to the adults and focus on your studies. NEWTs will be upon you before you realize! Now, who can tell me the properties of Gubraithian Fire and who discovered it?”

No one is satisfied by her answer. Like a web of silver spider silk, anxiety weaves its way through all of them, their shiny bright futures now murky with doubt and fear.

—

The first Hogsmeade weekend of the year shines with bright, cool, morning sunlight. Students rub at their eyes tiredly as they bundle up against the chilly Scottish air, sleepy excitement running throughout the castle. Surprisingly, Sirius hasn’t been banned from the village. Maybe McGonagall had thought it too cruel a punishment on top of everything else, or maybe she’d just (correctly _)_ assumed that if banned, he’d go anyway.

Either way, he joins the throng at the doors, waiting with James and Peter for Filch to check their names off a scroll of parchment long enough to circle the castle several times before they can file into threstral-led carriages.

“Bloody early for this sort of thing, eh?” says James through an exaggerated yawn as he squints at a boisterous group of third years. His black hair is sticking up in all directions, as if he simply rolled out of bed and came downstairs without once meeting a mirror. “Haven’t even had a chance to have my morning cuppa.”

“It’s nearly noon,” says Peter with a frown.

“Early,” insists James.

“Where’s Remus?” Peter stands on his tip-toes to see over the heads of the other boys.

James squints down at his watch, then across the queuing students. “Maybe he changed his mind.”

“No surprise there,” says Sirius dejectedly. “I told you this was a bad idea.”

“Look,” says James with the force of someone trying to speak words into truth, “he’s probably just running late.”

“Or maybe he’s staying behind to study,” Peter tries to add helpfully. “You know Moony and books.”

Sirius kicks at the stone floor with his toe. “Right. Study.”

The queue inches forward, and by the time Sirius makes it out of the castle into the weak autumn day, his mood has sunk to the bottom of the Black Lake. His foul mood lasts all the way to Hogsmeade, as the thestrals _clip-clop_ down the cobblestone road.

“Wish I could see them,” says Peter wistfully, as the carriage shakes with each bump. It’s just the three of them inside—Sirius sits across from the other two and sulks out the window as the fading trees pass.

“You sure about that?” he snaps.

James scowls behind his glasses as Peter stammers out an apology. “It’s not his fault you had a shitty childhood.”

He slumps in his seat and crosses his arms over his chest petulantly. “I should’ve just stayed at school.”

“You know what?” James clenches his jaw, the month of tension finally boiling over into righteous anger. “Fuck you! I’m so sick of your bloody attitude all the damn time!”

“Oh yeah?” Sirius puffs up his chest challengingly. “Then why don’t you just leave me the hell alone?”

“Oh, jog on,” snarls James. “You’ve been acting for weeks like we’ve ditched you—you always find excuses to go off on your own, and you’ve got this _woe is me_ attitude that’s become, frankly, rather bloody tiring. But you know what? If you’d just stopped moping around for one bleedin’ second, you’d realize that we’re still fucking here for you!

“Wormtail and I have every damn right to be pissed at you! And Remus has more right than both of us combined! What you did to Snape was wrong, and McGonagall was right to ban you from Quidditch. But still me ’n’ Pete have your back _every—single—day_ trying to convince Moony to forgive you. And if you got your head out of your arse, you’d know that we’re still brothers, through ’n’ through.”

The words settle over Sirius heavily, weighing on his chest like a boulder.

“What if he never gets over it?”

James sighs. “Eventually he’ll have to realize he can’t stay mad at your forever. And if he does—well, we’ll mismatch all his socks so he’s late to class every morning.” Peter laughs, but Sirius can only manage a reluctant half-smile.

By the time they get to Hogsmeade, James is back to his usual jovial self, like the weight of the world has been taken off his shoulders. He leaps out of the carriage and nudges Peter with his elbow.

“Ah, Wormtail—there’s Mary. Why don’t you go say hullo?”

He flushes past the collar of his shirt and stammers an excuse as she, Alice, and Lily walk past them like they’re invisible.

“Oi! Evans!” James calls out, hand rising to his hair out of habit.

Lily wrinkles her nose at him and takes Mary’s arm, hurrying them towards the village and away from the three boys.

“Rotten luck,” sighs James wistfully, his gaze lingering on her red hair. “She’ll get over it, though. Birds always do.”

“Except yours.”

He makes a face. “She’s not my bird. I told you lot I’m over her.”

Sirius looks from him to Lily’s retreating back. “Clearly.”

James punches his in the arm. “Git.”

“Tosser.”

“Will you two quit so we can get to the pub before all the good tables are gone?” huffs Peter as they begin to scuffle. “Last time I got squished in the corner next to a hag.”

They chuckle as they make their way towards the pub. Hogsmeade is bustling with witches and wizards, happy shoppers and eager students congesting the cobblestone streets. Shop doorbells tinkle with traffic as the crowds weave their way in and out, arms loaded with purchases. Bats squeak overhead, and jack-o-lanterns chortle with contagious holiday joviality. The Three Broomsticks is decked out in Madam Rosmerta’s finest Halloween trimmings, and the crowd is so thick it spills out the door.

They squeeze their way to the bar, elbowing more than a few drunk bastards out of the way while Peter scurries along the floor to find them a booth. “Bloody _—fucking_ _—_ hell that’s tight!”

“Guess you could do to lose a few stone, eh Prongs?”

“Fuck you, mate,” he hisses.

“Ah, my boys!” Rosmerta’s smoky purr greets them. “Been wonderin’ when I’d be seein’ you lot.”

Sirius slides in next to James. “Well, you didn’t miss us nearly as much as we missed you, Rosmerta dear,” he says smoothly, slipping into his role easily. Her cheeks turn rosy, and she giggles with the high-pitched twitter of someone half her age. His natural charm and aristocratic features have always given him a way with women, and over the years, he’s learned to use them to his advantage.

“Four butterbeers, then? On the ‘ouse, o’ course,” she says, batting her lashes at him.

“Only three today, Rosmerta love,” replies James with none of Sirius’s charisma. “Remus is back at Hogwarts studying like a good little lad.”

“Really?” She frowns. “I coulda sworn I saw ‘im ‘ere just a moment ago.” Her beady eyes peer across the crowd. “There, y’see! ‘E’s just there in the corner.”

Sirius whips around, and as he does, his elbow collides with the man next to him, sending his pint splashing all over both of them.

“Snot-nosed brat,” snarls the man, grabbing Sirius by the collar, Trow-made scotch dripping from his crooked nose. “I oughta wring yer scrawny neck!”

“As delightful as that sounds, I think I’ll pass.”

“Why you—!” He lunges for him as Sirius pulls his wand from his back pocket and stabs the belligerent man in the gut. He grunts, releasing Sirius, who stumbles backwards into James, causing them both to wobble and trip into a half-giant as hard and tall as a mountain.

“Oops,” says James weakly, as the giant takes one look at them through his great big bushy beard and shoves them backwards into the crowd. They go sprawling to the floor, knocking down several people like pins.

“Enough!” Madam Rosmerta shouts above the commotion, wand raised threateningly. “Frank, I’m cuttin’ you off fer good! Take yer drunken arse t’ the ‘Og’s ‘Ead—I run a reputable business ‘ere.”

Her bald-headed bouncer Lance drags Frank to the door and unceremoniously shoves him into a gaggle of elderly Goblin nuns who screech and jump back in terror. Sirius pushes himself up with a groan and extends a sticky hand to help James up.

“You can’t say Rosmerta’s isn’t a good time,” he laughs.

The people around them grumble and glare as they pick themselves up and dust themselves off. The crowd thins around them; they limp to a back table with Rosmerta’s promises to bring their drinks to them.

“What happened?” Peter asks anxiously from the booth he’d managed to snag.

“Just a spot o’ bother with a local,” shrugs James nonchalantly. “Nothing the Marauders couldn’t handle.”

Sirius blanches at something green, sticky, and nauseating on his cloak then rolls his eyes. “I handled it. You nearly got us squashed by a giant.”

“Hey, I helped!”

“You call that helping?”

He hisses as James’s foot connects with his shin. “If you hadn’t run into him in the first place we wouldn’t’ve—“

“Hey! I only ran into him because…”

He trails off and swivels suddenly. There, in a far back corner just as Rosmerta said, the dim candles casting shadows beneath his fringe, is Remus. His lips are pursed tightly, eyes boring hotly into Sirius with the look of disappointment he knows all too well. His lips move with silent words, and then another boy sticks his head out of the booth curiously.

Sirius’s stomach drops.

James squints through his glasses. “Isn’t that Robbie Sweeting?”

The boy—and it is goody-two-shoes Robbie Sweeting, a swotty Ravenclaw prefect Sirius has never liked—looks at the three of them one-by-one, then turns back to Remus to ask something. Remus’s lips draw together tightly as he shakes his head, his eyes grazing over Sirius once more before he reaches across the table and laces his fingers in Robbie’s.

James clears his throat awkwardly. “Well, er…guess they’re busy.”

“Yeah,” mutters Sirius, something inside him crumbling, “guess so.”


	6. Elliptical Orbit

They host an emergency meeting over supper.

“He can’t be serious, can he?”

“I’m—“

“ _Don’t_ ,” they warn in unison. Sirius sinks back in his seat glumly.

“He’s probably just doing it to get back at you,” says James around a mouthful of beans. Emmeline Vance wrinkles her nose at him across the table.

Sirius scoffs. “Then we’re sorely overestimating Moony’s sense of revenge.”

James blinks at him like he’s daft, but he crosses his arms over his chest stubbornly. It’s not as if this is some melodramatic lover’s quarrel, with Robbie as the unwitting pawn in their fucked up game of revenge chess. It might be easier if it was. It would certainly hurt less if Remus could take the sword of Gryffindor and stab him through the heart. Then maybe he could see the way he bleeds for him, the wound hemorrhaging his hopes, dreams, and regrets in a pool of crimson at his feet.

Maybe then Remus would understand.

He stabs his fork into his egg vigorously, the yolk spilling hotly across his plate. “Remus is a bloody swot. Robbie’s wasting his time.”

Peter and James share a look over his head they think he doesn’t notice.

“Well,” says James slowly. “I suppose Robbie’s a bit of a swot too, so he doesn’t mind.”

Peter nods. “They can be swotty together.”

He wrinkles his nose and abandons his fork.

“Remus has the worst jokes,” he says. “He’ll hate them.”

They share a look—again that damn look!—and James’s shoulders slump as he seems to lose whatever silent argument they’re having. Sirius clenches his jaw.

“ _What?_ ”

“It’s just…” James sputters for words like a fish out of water. “Maybe this is a good thing, Padfoot. If he’s busy snogging Robbie, he’ll forget about being angry at you, and—and things can go back to how they used to be.”

“That’s ridiculous,” he scoffs. “They’re not snogging. It was one bloody date! I doubt it was even a date—it was probably just the weekly stuck-up prefect meeting. What a ridiculous idea… This is _Remus_ we’re talking about, after all!”

Remus has never been the type to date. He’s always been too focused on school and grades and prank-planning to bother. It had been a relief, honestly, his glass heart secretly hoping that he’d been waiting for the right person.

For him.

Maybe he had been, but Sirius had been too young and dumb to realize. Not that it matters anymore, when Remus can barely stand to look at him. He’s bollocksed up everything decent in his life, and now he doesn’t even have the good grace to let Remus move on from the misfortune that is knowing Sirius Black.

He’s a selfish fucking bastard.

“Merlin’s tits, you’re right,” he admits with a strangled curse, the words burning his mouth even as he speaks them. “Damn you.”

James grins cheekily. “Did that hurt?”

“Oh, piss off.”

He leans back victoriously, ignoring Sirius’s heated glare.

“Don’t expect me to be _nice_ to Rob the Nob,” he says with a threatening finger at him. “I’ll be civil for Remus’s sake, but I’m not about to get chummy with him. He’s not one of us. He’s not a Marauder, and he never will be.”

James holds up his hands in surrender. “Fair enough. Wormtail—time to begin Operation Friendship!”

“‘Operation Friendship?’” Sirius scoffs. “That’s the stupidest fucking name I’ve ever heard. Wormtail, remind me to never let him name anything again.”

—

Robbie is perfect in all the wrong ways. His smile is sweet, but not dazzling; his kisses are soft, never firm, never desperate; his jokes are never lame. He smells like unscented soap and clean laundry, but Remus prefers the mixture of lemongrass and God-awful aftershave that is wholly and uniquely Sirius.

Robbie is…Robbie: sweet, sensitive, and kind. He doesn’t jeopardize Remus’s life for a prank. He doesn’t wrap him up in a whirlwind of emotions that leaves him reeling. He doesn’t make his blood rush past his ears with desire that bursts from his skin like the wolf beneath.

Robbie is everything he should want.

Remus must be some kind of masochist. He wants what he can’t have—what he _shouldn’t_ have. He’s not one for divination, but even he can see there’s only pain in their future. It would be so much _simpler_ if he just stopped wanting him, but it’s as if Sirius has put the Imperius Curse on his very soul: he can’t stop even if he wants to.

“So Robbie, eh?”

James’s voice drifts over from where he’s lying on his bed, feet up on the wall and head dangling precariously over the edge of the scarlet quilt. Remus looks up from the notes he’s rewriting, and his cheeks begin to burn self-consciously. Sirius becomes unnaturally still on his own bed, his hand poised over the page of the Quidditch supply catalog he’d been flipping through a moment ago, his neck strained awkwardly to catch his reply.

He doesn’t know if they planned it this way, waiting until now to talk about it where Sirius can overhear, or if James is just being his usual over-protective self. Either scenario leaves Remus with the urge to fidget under their scrutiny. It would be so much easier if Sirius’s infamous temper were to rise and give him an excuse to hate him once more. But Sirius is quiet, patient—barely breathing in anticipation of Remus’s response.

“Yes, Robbie.”

James’s eyes flicker to Sirius then back again. Remus ignores it. He doesn’t belong to Sirius, and Sirius doesn’t belong to him. It’s stupid of him to assume he’ll never date anyone just because Sirius exists.

“That’s…great. Really good, actually. I’m happy for you, mate.”

He arches a brow dubiously.

“You think he’s a wanker,” he says for him, with a knowing sigh.

“Er…”

“Go on. Say it.”

“He’s just…not one of us.”

Remus stares at him blankly. “If this is your way of confessing your love, Prongs, it’s pretty shoddy.”

“No!” sputters James, nearly falling off his bed. “Sorry, mate, you’re just not my type.”

He pretends not to notice the second, hasty glance at Sirius, who has abandoned his catalog in favor of pretending to be wholly engrossed in the Marauder’s Map. “I dunno, perhaps I should tell Lily she doesn’t have to worry about you stalking her anymore…”

“I don’t stalk her!”

“Rubbish,” chirps up Peter for the first time.

James chucks his pillow at him and hits him squarely in the forehead. Peter responds by knocking his glasses askew with his half-eaten Blood Pop. Their skirmish quickly dissolves into an all-out war of dirty sock bombs and sweaty jumper shrapnel. Remus ducks to avoid being hit by a particularly rancid Quidditch jersey rocket and pops back up to the tingling sensation of being watched. He turns, unnoticed by his warring roommates, to meet Sirius’s piercing gaze.

He holds it for a beat— _one, two_ —and then it disappears into the folds of the map again, echoes of pain vanishing as quickly as they came.

“Yetch! He bit me!” James yelps, now on the floor in a pile of dirty clothes, as rat-Peter scurries away under his bed victoriously.

Remus finally turns back to him and purses his lips motheringly. “What did you honestly expect?”

James grumbles as he sits up, waving white boxers in surrender, and Remus uses their distraction to seek out that deep well of emotion again. But Sirius has boarded it up tightly, his stubbornness lending itself well in that respect, and however Remus tries, he can’t breach it. Perhaps he’d merely imagined it in the first place.

—

The Marauder’s annual Halloween prank is practically tradition by now. It’s become, to the dismay of the entire teaching staff, as highly anticipated as the Halloween feast. The day is spent with paranoid students double-checking their book bags while wary professors cast disarming charms before entering their classrooms.

They trade whispers in the corridors: _when will it happen? What do those boys have up their sleeves this time?_

The clock ticks-ticks-ticks down.

They hold their collective breaths as Dumbledore stands to give his traditional Halloween speech.

Nothing happens.

The food appears and first bites are taken. _It must be the food_ , they murmur, _it must be now…_

Still nothing happens.

_At the end_ , they decide, haughty with their own cunning. _The prank will come at the end._

But the feast ends: Black is still conspicuously absent, and Potter has barely touched his plate.

—

“Stop—you’re going to ruin it,” snaps Lily, grabbing the essence of mugwort out of his hand. “You have to stir it counter-clockwise twelve times first, then add in the ground fang, _then_ add three drops of mugwort.”

“Bloody hell, Evans, your nails are sharp,” mutters James grumpily, sucking at the new scrape on his finger.

“Sorry,” she replies, wholly unsympathetic, “but we don’t have time to redo this if you mess it up.”

James gives up and flops back in his chair, letting Lily take over. Despite what she believes, he’s not shit at potions—it’s hard not to be at least decent when your father is a famous potion’s master. But there’s too much on his mind lately for him to give a damn about how many drops to add or which way he needs to stir. Brewing potions is unbelievably dull, and he can’t help it if his mind starts to wander.

At least Sirius is in class today. James can’t stop peeking over at him slumped miserably in his seat while Emmeline prepares their potion.

“Why aren’t Black and Remus working together?” Lily asks as she begins to stir the concoction counter-clockwise.

“Because Remus is working with Peter,” he deflects casually.

She sighs long-sufferingly, the kind of sigh James’s mother does when his father is being particularly headstrong. “You know what I mean.”

“Can’t say I do, Evans.”

The look she gives him almost makes him wilt like the dehydrated hydrangea in their cauldron.

“Fine,” he concedes. “Why aren’t you and Snivellus working together?”

Her eyes jerk over to Snape, and a terrifying storm brews in their green depths. “You know why.”

“He’s a prat. Some people—“

“I know how some people are,” she cuts him off abruptly. “I’m not an idiot—I know what’s going on in the world. We’re 1939 Germany, and everything is about to fall apart around us.”

He blinks. “What’s Germany got to do with it?

She makes a frustrated noise that sounds like “ _wizards!_ ” and shoves the vial of mugwort at him. “Just add the damn drops and _be quiet_.”

Taken aback by her sudden outburst, he follows her instructions while she mutters to herself: “Honestly, with the way you all stick your heads in the ground and pretend nothing has changed since 1330, it’s no wonder you haven’t figured out how to make technology work with magic.”

She stirs the cauldron three more times counter-clockwise, with perhaps a little more vigor than necessary. The potion fades from deep emerald to soft celadon, the scent of mint wafting from its vapors. Slughorn ambles across the room to observe.

“Wonderful, Lily! As always, top marks! Are you _sure_ no one in your family practiced potions?”

She gives him a sweet smile, as if he’s asked her this for years. James thinks he probably has. “I’m completely sure, Professor. It’s just me—the first in my family.”

“Well,” Slughorn chuckles as collects some of their potion into a vial for grading. “I suppose someone people are simply born with talent—and some without.” He eyes James appraisingly. “Tell me, Mr. Potter, what’s old Fleamont up to these days?”

James stifles a sigh. Slughorn’s never forgiven him for not being as talented as his father. “I think he’s working on the cure for dragonpox, sir.”

“My, my, how impressive. Well, do give him my regards and well-wishes, and tell him he’s welcome to send an owl should he ever need a consultant. I do happen to have several well-known tinctures ascribed to my name.”

“I’ll let him know,” he says through gritted teeth. He can see Lily roll her eyes next to him, and more than anything at this moment, he wants this class to end.

Thankfully, the bell tower chooses that moment to chime. “And so must conclude our time together again,” says Slughorn with faux melancholy. “Don’t forget to submit your vials to me before you leave! Even you, Mr. Flint—I know a strapping lad like you is eager to go to lunch! Though I must say, I won’t have much of an appetite after what I saw in that cauldron,” he adds with a little laugh as Nigel Flint glares.

“Good talk, Evans,” says James as he shoves his book into his bag. “Let’s not do it again.”

She sets her jaw. “Gladly.”

He nods for lack of any better reply, slings his bag over his shoulder, and leaves with a quick hop-step. It’s almost easy to suffer her contempt each day when he pretends it doesn’t affect him.

Almost.


	7. Supernova

“All right,” says James as he tucks the invisibility cloak into his bag, “after Arithmancy, Peter’ll meet us at the statue of the one-eyed witch, and then we’ll head into Hogsmeade to grab supplies for tonight.”

“You’ll have to go without me,” says Sirius with a grimace. “I’ve got detention with McGonagall.”

“ _Still_?”

He stifles a sigh. “From now until the end of term.”

“But it’s your birthday! Did you even try to get out of it?”

“Considering everything that’s happened, I thought it best not to push my luck.”

James flops on his unkempt bed dramatically. “S’pose not. Well, me ’n’ Pete will go down while you dally off with Minnie scrubbing toilets or whatever she has you doing these days. I need to practice my Shrinking Charm anyway.”

He wrinkles his nose. “Dunno, Prongs, I think it looks small enough already.”

He barely dodges the pillow James flings across the room.

—

The letter arrives by Owl Post at breakfast; slim and sleek, addressed to Sirius in looping calligraphy, it bears the green wax seal of his parents’s solicitor. He slips it into his book bag and promptly ignores it. A letter that ominous can mean nothing good, and he’s had just about enough of bad news.

“What’s that, Padfoot?” asks Peter around his breakfast of beans and potato hash.

He shrugs flippantly as he double checks the offending letter can’t escape from between the pages of _The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 6._ “Don’t know—don’t care.”

James, sitting across the table next to Remus and ( _gag_ ) Robbie, purses his lips motheringly.

“Honestly, what’s the worst it could be?” he reassures him. “She’s already disowned me. Maybe I’ll get lucky, and he’s written to tell me my parents died in some terrible, tragic accident.”

“Yeah…” he agrees slowly, unconvinced. His face pinches like he wants to say more, but Sirius flashes him a warning glance, his eyes flitting to Robbie and back, and the words die on James’s tongue.

“Do you want to study together this weekend?” Robbie ask Remus quietly. “I could help you with your Transfiguration essay.”

Sirius falters mid-bite, and Peter nearly drops his fork. James goes as still as a deer poised to take flight. This weekend is the first full moon since, well…since everything. But Robbie doesn’t know that. He thinks the circles under Remus’s eyes are from overstudying, his weight loss the result of forgetting to eat. He doesn’t know the full moon is Saturday because he doesn’t know anything about Remus.

“I c-can’t,” stammers Remus, with the same skill he had at age eleven, which is to say, none at all. “My mum’s sick, so I’m going home to visit her."

“Merlin, I’m sorry,” he says with such sincerity it makes Sirius want to vomit. “What does she have?

“It’s a Muggle illness—you wouldn’t know it. But it’s incurable, so I don’t know how much time I have left. It’s been difficult with school.”

“I completely understand. You don’t have to apologize.”

He blinks. “I didn’t.”

It’s like _déjà vu_ , listening to the same lie he fed them for two years before they grew tired of the charade and followed him to find out where he got off to every month. He knows it’s completely irrational, but it bothers him that they now have to share that lie with Robbie, who has only known him at a distance while they’ve been his dorm mates for years.

The back of his neck prickles. He meets Remus’s eyes across the table, their gaze as sharp as an amber knife stabbing him through the heart. A beat. Two. He falters, suddenly dizzy with it all. Remus turns back to Robbie and slides their fingers together.

“But we can study together when I get back. The essay’s not due until Thursday.”

He stands abruptly and stalks off towards Charms without bothering to wait for Robbie’s reply. Stupid, _stupid_ Remus…

He slumps into a seat near the back of the class and tosses his book bag on top of the desk haphazardly. “I hope they’re very happy together,” he mutters bitterly to himself. James slides in next to him, thankfully without comment.

More students filter in; Remus takes his usual seat up front with Peter. He arranges his quill and parchment on the desk neatly like he always does before class.

“Good morning, class!” greets Flitwick as he climbs up the steps to his desk.

“Good morning, Professor Flitwick,” the class responds tiredly.

“Today we will continue where we left off discussing the disadvantages and dangers of improperly cast wandless magic. Now who remembers when we should use wandless magic?”

Alice raises her hand a split-second before Lily. “Only in dire circumstances when wands are unavailable.”

“Exactly,” says Flitwick. “Five points to Gryffindor. Wands were created to channel our magic—they allow us to become more focused and controlled. This is the reason that young children often have magical mishaps. They haven’t learned how to channel their powers, and thus end up with some interesting, and dare I say—disastrous—results. I’m sure you’ve all experienced your own misfortunes before you came to Hogwarts; perhaps you were upset or frightened or even very angry—yes, I see some nodding heads—tell me, Mr. Pettigrew, what is one magical accident you had as a child?”

“Er, I accidentally blew up my mum’s begonias once…”

“Oh dear,” Flitwick chuckles, “I expect she wasn’t too pleased. What about you, Mr. Black?”

Sirius’s head jerks up from where he’s been scribbling on the corner of his book, decidedly not paying attention, and tries to catch up with the conversation.

“Well…I did Apparate to the countryside when I ran away from home…”

There’s an explosion of whispers throughout the room, but the most gratifying is the shock in Remus’s eyes as he twists in his seat. He doesn’t know why he kept the details of his escape from Grimmauld Place to himself, but somewhere between the Hogwarts Express and now, he forgot to tell Remus and Peter exactly how he ran away. It feels good to see the startled look on his face, to remind Remus that his life isn’t all rainbows and roses.

“That’s very dangerous, Mr. Black. You’re lucky you didn’t lose a limb.”

He shrugs more nonchalantly than he feels and leans back in his chair. “Didn’t have much of a choice, Professor.”

Flitwick nods nervously. “Again, class, _dire_ circumstances, as I’m sure Mr. Black was facing. As a reminder, Apparition without a wand and without a license can lead to severe repercussions. Now, if we turn to page one-hundred and twelve, you’ll find…”

Sirius stops paying attention. Everyone has turned back to their books except for Remus, who purses his lips like he’s barely holding back his words. He winks at him recklessly. Let them come. Anything is better than the silence.

—

McGonagall’s office door is open when he walks in.

“Hullo, Professor.”

“Mr. Black—right on time for once. Have a seat.”

He slumps into a desk to the right of McGonagall’s and loosens his tie. “What’s it today, Minnie? Writing love letters to each other?”

She gives him a look above her spectacles. “If you could only be so lucky.” She pulls out a stack of parchment and lets them thump in front of Sirius. “You’ll be helping me grade first year essays.”

He pulls a face. “Can’t I just scrub the lav?”

“And let you off easy? I think not. I expect these to be impeccably graded. As a NEWT-level student, it should be easy for you to spot the errors.”

He wrinkles his nose as he begins to skim the messy handwriting on the top of the pile.

_The five properties of Transfiguration are:_

_1\. Intention_

_2\. Appearance_

_3\. Difficulty_

_4\. Transformation_

_5\. Reversal_

He grabs the essay off the pile and crosses out the second and third properties messily, scattering several droplets of ink across the parchment. “Blimey, was I this thick when I was a first year?”

McGonagall’s lips thin thoughtfully. “While I doubt anyone in their right mind could accurately describe you as thick, perhaps I would be better prepared to answer the question if you’d turned in your homework on time.”

“What can I say? I’m a rebel without a cause.”

“And I suppose your rebellion also includes skipping classes?”

He narrows his eyes suspiciously. “Who snitched?”

She sets down her quill and folds her arms across her chest. “Believe it or not, Mr. Black, we professors do speak to one another occasionally.”

“Terrifying.” He shudders. “Do both of us a favor and don’t speak to Sprout for the next 48 hours.”

She arches a brow dubiously. “Do I dare ask why?”

“Probably not.”

She sighs long-sufferingly as she returns to the essay in front of her; the top of her long, green-feathered quill bobs as she marks it up, slowly making her way through the mountain of homework perched precariously upon her desk. His vision begins to swim as he reads through essay after painful essay, each foot of parchment more full of corrections than the last.

It seems forever until the clock finally chimes eight, closing out his detention for the day. He arches his back, which cracks in protest, and yawns loudly. “How do you do this every day? I’m exhausted.”

She appraises him thoughtfully as she sets her quill back in its stand. “Believe it or not, Mr. Black, but I wasn’t always keen on becoming a professor. Like you, I found the idea of grading tedious, and the prospect of teaching rebels without causes such as yourself a pain.”

He tilts his head. “What changed?”

“Well, my father was Head of the DMLE at the time, and it was his wish that I become an Auror as he had. But as it so happens, I had my own rebellious streak, and I told him _get tae fuck_ and immediately took up an apprenticeship with my old Transfiguration professor.”

“He must’ve been furious.”

“Aye, but I was a strong-willed girl who didn’t back away from a challenge, and I don’t reckon you do either. We make our own destiny in this world—not our parents, or friends, or anyone else who thinks they’re entitled to us or our happiness.”

“Right,” he nods slowly, the words seeping into his chest.

She watches him momentarily, then shoos him away with her hand. “Until tomorrow.”

He slings his bag over his shoulder. “Night, Professor.”

“Good night, Mr. Black.”

He navigates between the full-bellied students milling about the corridors socializing before curfew. A group of trouble-making first years scatter as an enraged Filch runs past, chasing after Peeves the Poltergeist, while a gaggle of fourth-year Hufflepuff girls attempt to flirt with handsome, fit seventh years. But the most troublesome students perch at the bottom of the bannister, hassling those who try to pass.

Regulus. Travers. Avery and Dolohov. The best rubbish Slytherin can muster. He doesn’t have to see their arms to know they bear the same mark as his brother. He’s only surprised Snape isn’t with them this time.

A small second-year cowers on the floor under Regulus’s wand, a tin of biscuits scattered across the floor like he was ambushed on the way to Ravenclaw tower. He wipes angry tears from his eyes as he tries to push himself up.

“Stay on the floor, mudblood,” sneers Regulus, kicking him back down. “It’s where you belong.”

“Probably feels right at home,” mocks beady-eyed Dolohov. “Is it true mudbloods sleep on dirt floors?”

“They ought to,” replies Avery with a smirk, the others cackling along with him.

Sirius is striding across the hall before he even realizes it, wand raised at Regulus like he hadn’t tried for years to free him from his mother’s grasp.

“Leave him alone.”

They guffaw at him, their prey forgotten on the floor for the prospect of something much more satisfying. The boy uses their distraction to escape.

“What? No ‘hullo’ for your brother, Reg? I’m wounded.” He can barely hear the words over the pounding of his heart.

Regulus sneers down his nose at him, while the other poise around him, blood-thirsty and eager to strike. “You’re not my brother anymore. Or didn’t mum’s letter drive that point home?”

He lets the words glance off him, pretending their sting doesn’t bite. He’s learned to ignore the poisons of his parents, but deep down, he’d hoped that they wouldn’t infect his brother with the same venom. What a silly, childish dream.

“Honestly,” he shrugs, feigning bravado, “if it’s not a Howler, I don’t bother opening it. They’re all the same anyway: _family disappointment blah blah blah_. Where’s the creativity, eh? You’d think she’d learn to use a dictionary, at least.”

Regulus’s lips curl up cruelly. “You’ll want to read this one. Trust me.”

“What a rousing review. I’ll take it under advisement—“

“Merlin, stop talking and _hex him already_ ,” sneers Travers, pulling out his wand.

“Shut up, you stupid half-blood,” snaps Regulus, smacking his arm away. “No one touches him except me.”

It’s all Sirius can do to not laugh out loud. “Reg, you’re a piss-poor duelist, and you know it. You’ve never beaten me, and you never will.”

Regulus flushes angrily, to his immense satisfaction. Half of dueling is a mind game, and Regulus has never been good at keeping calm under pressure. “I’m stronger now! I know curses that would make you squirm.”

“Hardly,” he deadpans, fingers tightening around his wand. He doesn’t doubt his parents haven’t wasted any time teaching Regulus the most vicious curses they know. “But as much as I’d like to stay to find out, I’ve got important letters to read. Ta!”

He jumps the stairs two-at-a-time as hexes fly after him, their heat nipping at his heels as they crumble the stone beneath his feet. He throws a jinx over his shoulder, not bothering to see where it lands (the muffled shout sounds like Travers), and doesn’t stop running until he makes it back to the safety of Gryffindor tower.

—

_Mr. Black,_

_The following is provided as a courtesy for your records._

_Galfridus Addington, Esq._

_3 November 1976_

_We, the undersigned, abolish all birthright claim to both title and wealth on behalf of Sirius Orion Black. In the event of our deaths, the entire fortune of Gringotts vault 711 and any associated properties shall be hereby inherited by our only son and heir, Regulus Arcturus Black._

_Orion Phineas Black_

_Walburga Lacerta Black_

_—_

Sirius’s birthday has been the social highlight of the school year for the past three years, ever since he and James discovered the passage of the one-eyed witch and used it to smuggle in contraband firewhiskey to share with the entire tower. While Sirius’s motto of the night is always “the plan is there is no plan,” two things are sure to happen:

One: The Marauders will all get exceedingly, hilariously smashed; and,

Two: Someone will end up crying.

Peter had been the unlucky one that first year, after drinking more than he’d ever before imbibed and retching it up all over Dahlia Farswal, who he’d been trying (and failing) to chat up. It was an emotionally traumatizing experience for both of them, and he’s only just managed to rid himself of the last of the name calling that’s followed him since.

The year after, Peter accidentally swallowed his mandrake leaf and thus had to restart the entire Animagus process just days before the full moon. Last year, he passed out early and missed James nearly outing their secret by growing antlers in the middle of the common room after one too many bottles.

But he’s determined to make this year different. He’s going to have a good time, and maybe—just maybe—snog Mary if he’s lucky.

That’s assuming, of course, that James ever lets him get up to get a drink. The poor drunk idiot has been sitting at the table spouting poetry about Evans’s eyes for the better part of an hour.

“They’re just _so green_ , y’know? Y’know, Pete? Like—like grass. Just, green. The greenest grass ever.”

“Sure, Prongs,” he sighs, swirling the dregs of his empty bottle in a desperate attempt to get sloshed off the fumes.

“OI, EVANS!” James shouts suddenly across the room. Lily, Mary, and Marlene look over dubiously from where they have claimed the oversized chairs next to the window. “YOUR EYES ARE GRASS!”

Peter winces as Lily replies with a rude hand gesture.

“That was eloquent,” says Remus as he sits down next to them, saving Peter by offering him another bottle of firewhiskey.

He guzzles half of it before he replies. “He’s been like this all night.”

“So much for being over Lily.”

James thuds his head on the table and whines. “Why doesn’t she fancy me?”

Remus pats his shoulder sympathetically and transfigures his whiskey into water. “Have another drink, Prongs.”

He smiles blearily up at him. “You’re the best, mate.”

They share a look over his head, then Remus raises his brows as Mary makes her way across the room. “Hi, Peter.”

He does a magnificent impression of a fish until Remus’s shoe connects painfully with his ankle. “OW—hi.”

“Thanks for letting me borrow your Charms notes.”

“No problem. Anytime.” A hot flush climbs up the back of his neck.

She chews on her lower lip nervously. “I’m part of an inter-house Charms study group that meets every Tuesday after dinner. You could join us, if you like.”

“Definitely!”

She smiles brightly. Peter might even say her smile is as bright as the sun, if he can ever get as drunk as James. “Great! I—“

But whatever she is about to say is lost in the commotion by the stairs as Sirius makes his grand appearance. “Make way, peasants, for the recently disinherited!” He’s wearing his maroon quilt like a cape, a jaunty paper crown perched atop his head. The crowd parts for him like he is actually royalty. “I’m just a lowly gutter whore now, yet somehow still better looking than all of you.”

The crowd titters with laughter. Sirius has always been, and will always be, the life of the party. Even James can’t live up to the way people flock to him. Only Remus seems immune to his presence, his lips thinning into a tight line as his keen eyes follow Sirius’s every movement. He parades around the room and right into the inviting lap of Caradoc Dearborn. He climbs on top of him and straddles him, and wastes no time sticking his tongue down his throat like he’s conquering a new land. The crowd around him cheers.

“Moony…”

“Not a word, Wormtail.”

There’s a flash of something in his eyes—hurt, maybe, or anger—but he shutters it abruptly and stands, carefully setting his bottle on the table before he heads up the stairs to the dormitory.

Peter watches him leave with a heavy sigh. “I wish they’d stop fighting.”

“Forget about those gits,” says Mary, tugging him to his feet suddenly as a peppy song scratches across the Wizarding Wireless Network. “Come dance with me.”

He doesn’t need to be told twice. He abandons James and his firewhiskey at the table, and spends the rest of the night with Mary, dancing and talking and laughing, until they’re both sober and exhausted, finally stumbling to bed as the sun peeks over the Scottish highland.

Years later, he will remember it fondly as the best night of his life.


	8. Solar Flare

Remus can wrap up his emotions in pretty boxes and tie them with ribbons and never think about them again, but Sirius feels everything all at once.

His emotions burn hotter, and brighter, and he feels them like he’s standing next to the burning sun, his skin blistering with each torrid high. Caradoc’s fingertips leave sunburns on his thighs; his lips chap with every frenzied kiss. Sirius is on fire—scorching, searing, sweltering—until he’s weak-kneed and melting, the endless sunlit days blurring from one to the next.

They share kisses in the corridors between classes, find empty broom closets at lunch, and sneak off after dinner for some quick fondling behind the greenhouses.

“I knew there had to be some perks to shagging a Prefect,” hums Sirius, sprawled out on the floor of Greenhouse 3, Caradoc tucked nicely into his side. The ripening mandrakes snore gently in their slumber, the only sounds apart from Sirius’s pounding heart and Caradoc’s panting breaths.

They share a cigarette between them; the smoke wafts above them in delicate swirls. He takes a drag and passes it to Caradoc, who lets it dangle from his lips lazily—those wicked lips, which were wrapped around his cock not an hour earlier, still red and supple from their frolicking.

The heated touch of flesh on flesh is almost enough to banish Remus from his mind entirely. If he closes his eyes and concentrates, it’s Caradoc’s blue eyes he sees as he watches him drag his tongue along the thick underside of his cock, not Remus’s amber eyes, not his pale pink lips, not his sharp tongue and hollow cheeks. Caradoc is bigger than Remus, and stronger, maybe, if Remus was just a boy and not also a werewolf, and Sirius goes weak-kneed for those Quidditch-toned muscles pinning him to the earth while he fucks him with the ferocity of a hormonal teenage boy.

“We should get back,” says Caradoc as he passes back the cigarette. “It’s almost midnight. Filch’ll be out soon.”

He wrinkles his nose but doesn’t move. He’s comfortable, dammit. “I’m not worried about that old bag.”

“That’s because you’re not the one who would get suspended from Quidditch right before the match.”

“Oh,” he says, “that.”

Except he did get suspended, and the loss of it burns fiercely in his chest. He and James spent all last year planning how to pummel Slytherin into defeat, and now, instead of flying beside his best friend to victory, he’s stuck watching from the sidelines like a pillock.

“Is James going bonkers yet?”

Caradoc snorts abruptly. “He’s had us practicing every bloody morning this week. I think he’s gone a bit mental.”

“Probably.” He tries for casual as he takes a drag and lets the hot smoke escape slowly. It calms him a bit, the ritualistic inhale and exhale, the smoke seeping into his body to take control. “How’s Smith?”

“Bloody brilliant. He’d have your arse on the ground if you went head-to-head.”

He brushes off the sting with a quirk of his brow. “Lucky for me, my arse is already on the ground. That was your doing, I believe.”

His lips curl. “I suppose so. And what a fine arse it is. Going to bring that fine arse to cheer me on?”

He pretends to think about it, wiggling his ass teasingly. “Only if you promise to make it worth my while.”

“You can count on it.”

—

“You’re late.”

His words are quiet, yet as sharp and quick as a knife. Sirius wishes he isn’t so desperate for them.

“Going to dock points, Moony?” He tilts his head playfully.

The gently crackling fire illuminates the smooth valleys and scarred plains of his face. He doesn’t look up from his book as he replies, “No.”

This is the longest conversation they’ve had in a month.

—

In six years, the rivalry between Gryffindor and Slytherin has never been stronger, especially not after last year when Geordie Harper relinquished their trophy in a miserable defeat before graduating in shame. But this year, James is determined to reclaim their Quidditch dominance. All they must do is win this game by a Snitch’s worth, so they can advance past Slytherin to the Quidditch Cup final against Ravenclaw.

“We have to win by one-hundred and fifty points,” he says, pounding his fist into his palm as he gives them his usual pre-game pep talk. “No less, otherwise we forfeit the cup.”

Caradoc looks unimpressed in his Seeker’s robes. “We all know how to count, Potter.”

“Good. Then I trust I won’t have to shove my broomstick up your arsehole if you catch the Snitch too early.”

Marlene whistles lowly. “Wow.”

“This isn’t the team we started out with,” acknowledges James thickly. He’s never wished more for Sirius to be standing at his side, rather than Smith. This will be the first game he’s ever played at Hogwarts without him, and he feels his absence more starkly than he imagined. “But we’re the best damn team that we can be, so go out there and make Slytherin cry!”

They raise their broomsticks and shout, “GO GRYFFINDOR!”

Smith leans over to Margo. “Is he always like this?”

They walk onto the pitch to a vibrating crowd. It’s a brisk November day; the sun shines weakly behind pale clouds. He breathes in the bitter bite of frosty air that promises snow. It’s the perfect day for a match.

Madam Hooch calls them to order with a sharp chirp from her whistle. James squares up against Slytherin’s captain and glares; all week Lester Nott has been telling anyone who will listen that he is going to destroy Gryffindor today, and James wants nothing more than to wipe that smug smirk off his ugly face.

“Captains, shake hands.”

He grits his teeth as they shake so briefly they might not have even done it at all.

Nott winks. “Enjoy losing, Potter.”

“You first.”

Nott kicks off the ground hard, the entire Slytherin team following. James nods to his own team as he jumps on his beloved broom and zips into the air. The Snitch is released, but he doesn’t bother to watch it disappear into the sky as they form a circle around Hooch and the Quaffle.

Regulus Black leers at him. “The better Black remains.”

He clenches his jaw. “You’ll never be half the man Sirius is, you gormless prick.”

Regulus lunges at him, which earns a sharp foul call by Hooch. “The game hasn’t even begun yet!” she chastises loudly, wagging her finger. “Gryffindor’s Quaffle!”

James catches the Quaffle with a flourish and winks as he flies past. Thank Merlin for the infamous Black temper that he and Sirius both share. “Ta, mate!”

“With the first foul coming before the Quaffle is even released, the game begins,” sounds Edgar Bone’s voice across the pitch. “Gryffindor in possession. Potter passes to Toke—Toke passes to McKinnon, who passes back—seems like they’re having a bit of a laugh taunting the Slytherin team…”

The tumultuous crowd of green and silver boos loudly from the stands. James grins cheekily as he flies past Marlene. “Don’t think they like that much, eh?”

“Pity,” she laughs.

Regulus dives at Eadie, but she pulls up sharply and he ends up missing by nearly a meter. Eadie tosses the Quaffle to James, but he has to swerve sharply to avoid Flint’s Bludger. The Quaffle grazes his fingers and falls past him into Cypress Greengrass’s waiting hands.

“Slytherin in possession! Greengrass passes to Greengrass who passes to Black—they’re going for Chan at Gryffindor’s end—Black SHOOTS—MISSES! EXCELLENT SAVE BY GINGER CHAN!”

The Gryffindor crowd cheers loudly as Ginger gives James a thumbs up. He huffs out a long, frustrated breath between his teeth, his good mood vanishing. That was too close.

“Sean, cover me!” he yells, swooping towards the Greengrass brothers. He leans forward on his broom, picking up speed. Their Shooting Stars are no match for his Nimbus 1001; he easily overtakes them and plucks the Quaffle out of Basil Greengrass’s hands.

“POTTER STEALS THE QUAFFLE—MERLIN, LOOK AT THE WAY THE NIMBUS _MOVES_ —NO ONE CAN CATCH HIM! HE PASSES TO TOKE—TOKE FLIES TOWARDS THE GOAL AND—OUCH! AVERY’S BLUDGER KNOCKS HER OUT!”

Eadie spirals to the ground, saved only by Hooch’s cushioning charm. James dives for the Quaffle and wrestles it away from Regulus.

Zero to zero.

James speeds down the pitch, narrowly dodging another Bludger sent by Avery. Nott squares up imposingly in front of goal posts; James feints right, dives, and—

“POTTER SCORES! TEN POINTS FOR GRYFFINDOR!”

Nott swears loudly as James flies away, pumping his fist victoriously. The crowd in the stands cheers. He looks over his shoulder to see Peter jumping up and down, while Sirius whoops and hollers. Even Lily is there, James’s jersey number painted over her pretty freckles—

“Watch out!”

James swerves just in time to miss the Bludger aiming for him. It whizzes past with a rush of air close enough to ruffle his already wind-swept hair.

“Thanks for the heads up.” He smiles sheepishly at Margo, who rolls her eyes and flies away.

Caradoc starts searching for the Snitch. Wilkes marks his every movement, tailing him so closely their knees knock. James growls out between his teeth as he speeds off towards the other end of the pitch. He won’t be able to find the Snitch with Wilkes dogging him so closely. Nott must’ve told him to keep on Caradoc’s tail.

“SLYTHERIN SCORES! TEN POINTS!”

“WHAT?” James screeches to a halt mid-air. So caught up with watching Wilkes, he didn’t even notice one of the Greengrass brothers slip through Ginger’s defenses to score Slytherin’s first goal.

Marlene flies past furiously. “WHERE WERE YOU?” she screams.

He winces. “Sorry!”

Emboldened by their goal, Slytherin turns the game into an all-out war. Wilkes peels off Caradoc to block Ginger’s view of the pitch, while Marlene nearly collides with twin Bludgers sent by both Flint and Avery. James tries to steal the Quaffle from Regulus again, but he swings his elbow and connects solidly with James’s nose. His vision whites as pain explodes across his face; his glasses fall to the ground as blood gushes from his nose.

“BLOODY _FOUL_!” he can hear Sirius scream over every other voice in the crowd, but it’s quickly lost in the cheers of Slytherin as they score two goals in quick succession.

“SLYTHERIN LEADS THIRTY-TEN!”

“ _Fuck_ ,” he curses, flying low to try to find his glasses. But he’s blind as a bat without them, and the whole pitch looks like one muddy, greenish blur. “Bollocks—shit— _Accio glasses!”_

They fly into his hands, and he shoves them back onto his face, ignoring the bloody smudges and spider web of cracks across the lenses. He doesn’t have time to repair them right now, not when they’re twenty points and a chaser down.

“BLACK HEADING DOWN THE PITCH—BLACK TO GREENGRASS, GREENGRASS TO BLACK—GET OUT OF THE BLOODY WAY, WILKES! VILE, ROTTEN, CHEATING SON OF A—“

There’s some sort of commotion as Edgar is told off by Professor Flitwick, but James can’t hear it as he chases after Regulus, determined not to lose another goal.

“CHAN ELBOWS HER WAY IN FRONT OF WILKES—BLACK SHOOTS—SHE SAVES IT! ROTTEN LUCK, EH BLACK? I SUPPOSE SIRIUS GOT ALL THE QUIDDITCH TALENT IN THE FAMILY—“

Edgar has to duck suddenly as Regulus steals Flint’s bat and cracks a Bludger into the stands. “PISS POOR BASTARD—“

“EDGAR!”

“Not sorry, Professor!”

James grabs the Quaffle and pushes his broom until he hears it creaking and groaning underneath him. He’s not about to leave this game up to chance. He swerves past the Greengrasses and Avery; he swoops around Flint, dodges the Bludger he sends after him, and flies so furiously at Nott that the older boy flinches, leaving a Quaffle-sized gap in his defenses.

“POTTER SCORES AGAIN!”

Wilkes dives suddenly. The entire arena freezes.

“STOP HIM!” James screeches as a speck of gold glints across the pitch.

Wilkes hot on its tail, and Caradoc is right behind him, fingers outstretched, grasping for the twigs of Wilkes’s broomstick when—

Sean barrel-rolls into him from out of nowhere. The human Bludger knocks Wilkes off-course long enough for the Snitch to disappear into the sky. Slytherin cries foul, and for their trouble, Madam Hooch awards them a penalty shot. Basil Greengrass takes it for Wilkes; he centers himself in front of Ginger and spins the Quaffle in his hands. She matches his cheeky grin with her own steely gaze, poised on her broom like a cat about to pounce.

No one dares breathe. James has forgotten how.

Hooch blows her whistle, and Greengrass takes his shot. Ginger leaps and the Quaffle soars into her waiting arms; she blows him a kiss as she passes it to Marlene. Marlene hollers happily as she speeds off toward the other end of the pitch. James whoops after her, the wind whipping through his hair. The Slytherin chasers are on his tail like a pack of rabid dogs; he brakes suddenly, causing them to spiral out of the way to avoid collision. This leaves Marlene free to power toward the goal post, slipping past Nott to score Gryffindor’s tying goal.

“BRILLIANT MOVE BY GRYFFINDOR. THEY’RE REALLY GIVING SLYTHERIN A RUN FOR THEIR MONEY!”

There’s a gasp from the crowd as Caradoc dives suddenly. Wilkes chases after him, but he has such a long lead it’s no trouble for him to swoop down and wrap his fingers around the fluttering Snitch.

“DEARBORN CATCHES THE SNITCH! GRYFFINDOR WINS!”

James speeds towards Caradoc and tackles him to the ground, the entire team dog piling on top of them. Even one hundred Galleons can’t replace the utter joy he feels when he sees Slytherin’s bitter faces and Nott screaming his head off. Sirius and Peter run onto the pitch with the rest of Gryffindor, and he doesn’t even care when Sirius sweeps Caradoc up into a raunchy lip-locking. In fact, the only thing that could possibly make this better would be a congratulatory kiss from Lily Evans herself.

Maybe someday.


End file.
